


The Fox's Wedding

by LaceLich



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Bad French, Canon-Typical Violence, Cultural References, For Want of a Nail, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Genderfluid Character, Historical References, Internalized Homophobia, Literary References & Allusions, Morally Ambiguous Character, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Addiction, Sorry Not Sorry, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unconventional Uses for Dying Will Flames, Worldbuilding, fighting as flirting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7818907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaceLich/pseuds/LaceLich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In the autumn flames and mountains, there is the rain of fox’s weddings." - Kobayashi Issa</p>
<p>Sometimes they wonder if it could have been different, but when faced when the threat of the apocalypse there is only so much one can do. Avoid the problem entirely and pray it all works out in the long run.</p>
<p>Or, the story of Shimizu Hisamaru and how being reborn in Reborn in the body of a boy is the worst fate possible for an old lady. Really, she's much too old for these children. Why exactly does the universe have it out for them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: I - IIX

**Author's Note:**

> My labor of questionable love for the past few months, brought on by the surprisingly amazing resurgence of this fandom from the proverbial ashes. I've always been a fan of the 'take this series... now add someone new' idea, and so here we go.
> 
> For posterity here: I, the author, am a queer as all get out biological and mental female. If at any point I have portrayed this insensitively, please let me know in the comments and I will quite happily go and fix it.

There was something wrong with their son. At first, they were told it was all just a phase he would inevitably grow out of, but  _ he hadn’t. _ As he grew older, their precious son had only gotten worse. He distanced himself from his own father more and more as time past, buried his nose in books and only consented to be held by his mother.

Shimizu Hisamaru was supposed to be their pride and joy.

Instead they got a shut-in.

His mother loved them. Hisamaru knew this because she told them so, twice a day over breakfast and thrice before bed. She would kiss him on the crown of his tousled once pink hair and whisper "I love you," like a secret just for them. Hisamaru's father was nowhere near as much a fan of his son as his wife was.

For could it be a son if one day they demanded to be called one thing and the next another?

Shimizu Yahiro didn't know. All he knew was that his son was  _ strange _ in a way that made his hair stand on end and the drink to flow freely in his veins. What use was a son who didn't want to be his son? For Hisamaru was very clear that he hated his father and wanted the man dead, wanted to see the man strung up across the court of social opinion and eviscerated by the masses. It was no secret that the boy that said he was only a boy on the outside hated his father.

But for Mother, Hisamaru left it alone.

They endured; from the first dye job to each retouching, from the first hit to make a man of them to the last. Hisamaru endured. When their mother signed them up for lessons at the local women's only club at the university and told them not to say a word to their father, Hisamaru endured. Barely into first grade, or at least they should be if they ever applied themselves properly, and already they divided their family.

Mother whispered into dyed black hair and prayed everyday that something would change. She said she was sorry as she snipped and clipped away the ruined mess that remained after Hisamaru’s quiet rage. Mother trimmed and hummed, tried to calm down the teary child she loved.

_ A healthy mind dwells in a healthy body _ .

It could not continue.

Hisamaru had to be bodily dragged from their room, fingers clutching at door frames and an ungodly screech resounding throughout the neighborhood. They fought and fought until they made it to the gates of the school itself, then went freakishly quiet when faced with their classmates. Classwork was completed and never turned in, the papers somehow always finding themselves meticulously folded into increasingly complex origami creations as time passed. Their teachers didn’t understand what was happening with this particular child. Shimizu Hisamaru did not want to play with other children. Shimizu Hisamaru would not answer any adult that referred to them as any variety of a boy. Their teachers had much more luck referring to them as either this or that child, and they had mastered the deadpan stare by day five.

Their teachers couldn’t call upon Hisamaru in class to get any kind of answer that made sense. All Hisamaru wanted was to be left alone. Frankly, their teachers were fine with it. When their teacher gently asked them during break if they would please participate more, Hisamaru only wanted to know what the point was. Bluntly, Shimizu Hisamaru wanted to know what the practical worth of the activity would hold on their adult life.

A cute introduction with their classmates? Pointless. They already knew how to introduce themselves in a manner befitting a workplace. Next question.

Would Hisamaru like to take a turn reading out loud? Fine.

Would Hisamaru like to play outside with their classmates? Muda da. They had little desire to associate with tiny humans who didn’t understand the basics of society. Next question.

Would it be possible for Hisamaru to please interact with the class? Muda da.  _ Muda da. _

_ Absolutely pointless. _

After two months, Shimizu Hisamaru was voluntarily withdrawn from their preschool. All they wanted in return for their silence when their father asked was a pile of study materials for English speakers to learn Japanese. Odd, but Mother was always willing to indulge her only child.

Or at least Hisamaru was the only child until they were six and forcibly enrolled in primary school. Mother was terrified that her precious child would enter one of their strange moods when her belly began to grow and grow and her husband’s happiness increased with it. Instead, Hisamaru would happily spend hours telling stories to Mother’s belly if they could. And so Mother bargained. Hisamaru could talk to the growing baby and go to lessons if they went to school.

And so Hisamaru went to primary school.

Would Hisamaru like to take a turn reading out loud? Fine.

Why is there this complex box in the back of the classroom? Hisamaru did it. It’s for Pochi.

Would Hisamaru like to play outside with their classmates? Muda da. They had little desire to associate with tiny humans who didn’t understand the basics of society. Next question.

Would it be possible for Hisamaru to please interact with the class? Muda da.

Would Hisamaru please come to the board and solve this problem? Muda da. No one actually uses algebra in the workplace. Next question.

Could Hisamaru please stop kicking the other children in the shins and stealing the class hamster? No. Tell them to be gentler. Next question.

Why is there a three foot gap of space around Hisamaru at any point in time? Because he told us that we were tainting his oxygen with our pointless existences and scares us.

A cute introduction with their classmates? Pointless. They already knew how to introduce themselves in a manner befitting a workplace. Next question.

Why is the only person in Hisamaru’s metaphorical bubble the really quiet girl? Because some of the boys picked on her and he saw it, and he grabbed a broom and broke their noses. Apparently she belongs to him now. Or at least that’s as far as the children involved will explain it. Further inquiry was deemed completely pointless.

Their teachers don’t understand why their peers keep their distance when the child in question is generally so benign. Well, they were benign so long as you referred to them only as Shimizu-kun and never managed to specifically use their name lest they think  _ you were being rude _ and thus a target of their ire. The teachers at Okabe Elementary School had terrifying memories of the absolute limits of creative depravity Hisamaru would resort to in the name of their revenge when one failed at what they considered to be the basic rules of manners. It was strange that the child would resort to such terrifyingly petty methods, such as the time that the physical education instructor had tried to make Hisamaru change clothes with the boys because obviously Hisamaru was a boy.

To this day no one knows exactly how many things Hisamaru had superglued shut. Tomada-sensei was still paying for the damages done when the delicate child locks on every door of his car had been glued permanently into the on position. No one had ever managed to actually find a way to point fingers at the child, but the bland way they would inquire about Tomada-sensei’s well being every time he would fail at the simplest of tasks was a clear indicator of the perpetrator. The window wouldn’t open, the lights wouldn’t turn on, the mini-fridge in his apartment wouldn’t open, none of the pages in his planner could be turned, his cellphone wouldn’t charge, on and on ad nauseum.

The heckling only stopped when Hisamaru was allowed to change in the restroom.

Tomada-sensei was more than happy to preemptively allow the child to use the staff restroom for all of their private needs in order to avoid whatever new hell Hisamaru could come up with. He was also the first and only person allowed to call Hisamaru by any variety of nickname to their face and took a strange delight in abusing the privilege.

Hisamaru was an oddly quiet eight year old who was only  _ marginally _ obsessed with their little sister. They dressed her in the morning, scooped her up whenever she was the slightest bit distressed, and made a point of being a far better parental figure than Shimizu Yahiro. Frankly, this wasn’t a difficult task in Hisamaru’s humble opinion.

What kind of police officer spent more time at a bar than at home with his family or at work?

It wasn’t exactly a secret that Shimizu Yahiro was a drunk cop, but in a town as quietly bought off by the yakuza as Okabe it wasn’t exactly a hardship. Hisamaru’s father made more money from being bribed to look the other way than he did at his actual occupation and that rankled his child immensely. While yes, Hisamaru did enjoy having the luxury of continuing their martial education at whatever self-defense course their mother found in the local news, it was still despicable.

Hisamaru was determined to make sure that baby Michiko had as wonderful as a life as they could make it. If that meant becoming a second parent and effectively shoving Yahiro out of the picture, then so be it. They were prepared. Diaper changing was easy when you were still small enough to get away with using the floor as a changing table. Hisamaru had been too quiet of a child to adequately prepare either of their parents for what a fussy baby was really like, and Michiko had the lung capacity enough to make up for their lack.

Mother was happy that there was finally a reason for her little star to willingly interact with someone who wasn’t either Tomada-sensei or herself. If that person happened to be their baby sister and Hisamaru was willing to allow bribes of Michiko’s time for their cooperation, so be it. Mother didn’t even mind that her older child was determined to dress her younger child in as many adorable outfits as was humanly possible.

But pride would ruin everything the Shimizu family held dear.

Yahiro wanted more for his silence, even more for his inaction. The yakuza bribes weren’t enough for two children, not with his steady demise into the depths of obscurity. His office no longer trusted him with even the most basic of tasks, floundering under the weight of his own failures. After all, it was common sense that a man be able to care for his own family if he wanted to be considered its head. It was inevitable, driven by his own pride and the combined apathy of his children, that Shimizu Yahiro would do something ill advised. He began to ask the yakuza for more while giving them steadily less, going behind one family to deal with another. Dangerous even for wiser men than he, Yahiro did not stop to consider the consequences.

Eight years old and blood in their teeth, suddenly alone and all the angrier for it, Shimizu Hisamaru would reap the fruits of their father's crop.

They did not say a word as the ceremony progressed. Instead they carefully cradled the photo frame in their arms and tried not to make eye contact with the degenerate human being (or at least they desperately hoped was a human being and not a figment of their imagination) beside them. They buried their family that day, or at least as much of them as the police could find for cremation and couldn't see for the tears rolling down their face.

This is a story that does not truly start with a birth, but begins instead with a single moment after death.

Shimizu Hisamaru was only eight and thus not even remotely old enough to be able to take care of themself, let alone the infant glued to their side who warbled and gummed at her sibling's fingers. The only sign of life the older child made was when any adult expressed a preference for one child over the other, their dull red eyes snapping to attention as their words flayed at them. Michiko was their sister and they would keep them if it was the last thing they did. Together or not at all.

Hisamaru was not an idiot, and deliberately would allow adults near only to have them recoil away at whatever fresh baby aroma would waft up at the slightest movement. And when that adult gagged, Hisamaru would whip the babe away and deftly attend to whatever need it was with a practiced hand. It helped their cause immensely when Michiko would bawl at the top of her lungs every time someone who wasn't Hisamaru would attempt to pick her up, her ear splitting distress so plain no one wanted to deal with it at a funeral.

Or at least this plan would have been perfect if not for the reprehensible human being who had carried their father's photo for the funeral march.

Shimizu Kaoru was a waste of oxygen. Scruffy and unkempt, suit disheveled and reeking of cigarette smoke, he was the picture of everything that annoyed Hisamaru. It was bad fortune that this man, if one could deign to call him that, happened to be their father's younger brother. It was even worse fortune that he was the only adult that Michiko didn't cry at.

What made it awful was that he kept trying to instigate conversations with Hisamaru. Conversations that were several levels of inappropriate for a child to even be contemplating.

“Do you think I could get that florist over there to come home with me if I tell them you’re my nephew?” Kaoru scratched at his chin, blissfully ignoring how the child at his side glared veritable daggers at him. “I mean, when you don’t talk... you’re pretty cute.”

Hisamaru ground their teeth and tried very hard to not make eye contact with their uncle. If they didn’t talk, didn’t interact at all, he would have to go away. Hisamaru knew perfectly well that some adult was going to have to take up the daunting role of their and their sister’s guardian, but that didn’t mean the pickings were so slim they would accept just anyone. They had more in common with a fungal infection than this… person. Hisamaru shifted so that Michiko drooled on a less noticeable spot on their pants, and stoically attempted to keep staring at the nice wall across the room.

Kaoru touched their hair. In their shock over having that much cologne that close to their person, not to mention the unspeakable abomination of that man’s failures at basic hygiene, they froze like a deer in headlights. He rolled a few strands between his fingers before peering at their face and grinning at them. “My bad. You’re a girl, huh?”

Later, Hisamaru would swear to everything holy up to and including their revered mother’s spirit that it was an accident. Their arm cocked back on instinct and the slap rang out across the room, freezing every adult even as Hisamaru scooped up Michiko and bolted. “You’re… You’re a  _ pervert _ ! Stay away from us you… you…  _ dog! _ ”

He rubbed at his cheek and pulled himself into a semblance of order. “Definitely a girl, ow,” he muttered under his breath as he staggered to his feet. “Well. You’re alive after all. I was worried for a bit there. So, hey there. I’m your Uncle Kaoru.”

“Yes. I am aware of that.” Hisamaru had turned their body to keep their baby sister as far away from this lunatic as possible even as he slunk closer. “And you’re  _ not listening _ to me.”

“And you are _ clearly _ your mother’s child. Damn Sacchan, the hell kind of kid did you raise? Wait, the hell is your name anyway? I can’t just keep calling you ‘girl’ or ‘hey, you’ for fuck’s sake.”

_ Oh no _ . A graveyard suddenly held more life than the little room as Hisamaru stared blankly at their uncle. While Hisamaru had come to grips with their gender crisis (namely the odd dichotomy of being a girl on the inside, a boy on the outside, and the resulting oddity of preferring to be both and neither at the same time) at a very early age, they were pretty sure they looked like a boy. Their father dyed their hair religiously once a month to be black, their mother had taken the time to make sure her child knew the art of tinting their eyebrows, and Hisamaru was pretty sure they didn’t actually own any clothes that weren’t the kind of drab colors and style one would expect out of the apocalypse. Apparently this was not enough. “What,” they drawled. “Are you on something?”

“Oh. Shit. I know this. The baby’s… Miho? Meiko? Fuck. I have no clue. Help a guy out here.”

“Tomoe. To. Mo. E. I am Tomoe. She is Michiko.  _ Please get away from us _ .” Kaoru was an idiot to miss the sheer disdain the eight year old had for him. Hisamaru cradled their sister’s head against their chest as they did their absolute best to impress upon Kaoru that they really did not appreciate this. He was their  _ uncle _ and he didn’t even know their names.

The man in question went carefully blank for a moment too long. “I… I see. My apologies then Tomoe-ch-”

Hisamaru cut him off before he could even utter one of their infamous ‘no buttons’. “You will not refer to me in such a familiar manner.” They stood up straight, eyes narrowed as they imperiously remonstrated him.

Kaoru scratched at the stubble on his chin, head tilted as he regarded his dead brother’s children. “Right. Got it. Just… stay here for a bit, okay? I have to go… do some adult things. Really boring.” He strode out of the room like the flames of hell licked at his heels, leaving the two children to quietly stew in silence.

The dim sound of arguing echoed through the house as indistinct conversations waxed and waned with the fall of the sun. Hisamaru, for their part, was more than happy to completely ignore the instructions of the random adult who had seen fit to give them such. They quite gleefully spent their entire time rolling about on the floor with their baby sister and generally avoiding their family like every one of them had come down with a case of the bubonic plague. This was their house, and Hisamaru was determined to make the most of whatever time they had left in it.

It was late evening when Hisamaru finally managed to get Michiko to sleep via judicious application of lullabies and bouncing her until their arms got tired. The house was empty and still, and it was with bated breath that they made their way downstairs to the kitchen. Whatever adult was left had won the hours long argument. Which meant that whichever adult was still in the only room left with the lights on was going likely going to be the person the recently orphaned Shimizu children would be spending the rest of their lives with. Their mouth moved with silent prayers to whatever deity that would listen that the adult in question was at least  _ not Shimizu Kaoru _ and had at least some sort of reasonable maturity.

The man drinking coffee at their kitchen counter, idly drumming his fingers against the countertop, was not the answer to Hisamaru’s prayers.

Kaoru gestured silently to the dining room table as he sipped calmly at his pilfered coffee. “Shit kid. You made this really easy.”

“Get out of my house.”

He loosened his tie with one hand, placed his mug in the sink and completely ignored Hisamaru’s face. “Yeah, no can do. Have a seat, kid. We need to talk.” Kaoru slinked over to the table and sprawled into a chair even as Hisamaru let out an ungodly hiss. He tapped at the wooden surface with his fingers, a strange rhythmic drumming that drowned out the child’s seething rage. “I know you don’t exactly like me.”

Hisamaru snorted, dragging out the chair that was usually theirs and settling down at the table with a scowl. “You’ve got that right.” Basic etiquette said that Hisamaru should probably have offered their uncle some sort of beverage or a snack, but the child really didn’t feel like giving any sort of ground to this scruffy relative. “What, exactly, do you even want to talk about?”

“That. That right there. Kids don’t talk like that. Do they, Tomoe? Or should I be calling you Hisamaru?” He leaned forward and rested his chin in his palm, fingertips drumming against the side of his face. “I am pretty sure I only have one niece.”

Hisamaru blanched. “Tomoe. I prefer Tomoe.” It was a good name, a strong yet pretty one that could have belonged to a boy or a girl.

His free hand reached out to ruffle at the kid’s hair. The pink was starting to grow back in, defying the precious black hair the Shimizu family was so proud of. It made a terrible amount of sense if one took into account the equally prodigious genes of the child’s mother. Sacchan had been terribly lax if she had let her husband get away with what Kaoru had a terrible suspicion she had. “I figured.” Damn it Yahiro. Had he really wanted a son  _ that badly _ and Sorcha had just gone along with it?

Kaoru buried his head in his hands and sighed. Of course. It all made sense. Why the kid was so damn  _ unfriendly _ and apparently never really wanted to leave the house unless they had to. He wouldn’t either if he had been forced to run around in, for instance, dresses. (Then again, Kaoru was confident enough in his manly prowess to realize that he would look like a hairy abomination of a woman.) The kid- Tomoe, he had to start thinking of her by  _ her actual name _ was obviously not as torn up by her father’s demise as she should have been.

To be fair, Kaoru wouldn’t be too torn up over it either if his father died after drunkenly forcing his oldest child to be a boy. From the way she dressed, spoke, walked, right down to the color of her hair, Shimizu Tomoe had been made to be Shimizu Hisamaru. All because his brother had so desperately wanted a son.

And that was not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination.

Kaoru gathered himself together and bowed. “I wish to express my deepest apologies for the terrible things my brother had made you do. I… will try not to be anything like him.”

For their part, Hisamaru could only watch in a strangely detached euphoria as their uncle somehow managed to misunderstand and understand their life in a single day. It was a freeing sensation, much akin to free falling, and they didn’t know how to handle their relief.

So they cried. Great big tears that quickly became sobs stifled into the edges of their sleeves as they tried to wipe away the evidence of their unmanly emotion. Boys didn’t cry.

The sudden warmth that reeked of aftershave, cologne, and cigarettes was so distinctly foreign that it just made them cry all the harder. Kaoru held his niece and tried his best to shove his panic into a dark corner of his mind to be analyzed later. “I… I’m going to take care of you now. You and Michiko. That’s ok with you, right?”

In this sort of situation the only thing Hisamaru could do was cry and jerkily nod into their uncle’s suit jacket. Unconcerned with the rumpling or the eventual snot and tear stained mess they were making of it, the only thing they could do was cry until the crying stopped.

Kaoru knew perfectly well that he was literally the least qualified person to take care of an eight and one year old child. At the same time he was automatically the  _ only _ person qualified for the job, what with his singular ability to look at Hisamaru and see Tomoe instead. Michiko was just an added bonus of a soon to be toddler, and Kaoru was pretty sure even he couldn't mess the baby up as much as his brother had messed up his oldest daughter.

The fact that Tomoe was legally on the family register as Hisamaru and saddled with the border of the wrong gender would be laughably easy to fix. All Kaoru would have to do would be to re-register her with all the proper information and just leave Hisamaru as a void entity. No need for all the muss and fuss. She would never need to know that he had effectively claimed paternity over her as a previously illegitimate child. It wasn't as if the eight year old was going to go and check such things.

Or he could take the route that wouldn't require him to bribe government officials and doctors alike and just  _ explain the situation  _ to the school district. There had to be someone sensible at the school who would understand just how fundamentally wrong his brother had been.

Not that the Shimizu family understood. His mother couldn't believe that her eldest son had been in bed with the yakuza, just like his father couldn't wrap his head around the concept that Yahiro had been a dirty cop. Sending the children to their mother’s family would have been dishonorable even if anyone could have found said family.

Sorcha had been the only one with a real will. Everything Yahiro had on file was his department’s mandatory basic will that hadn’t been updated past leaving everything to his wife.

But that was a problem for another day.

For now, he had a child to get to stop crying.


	2. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter : Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which reality bites and delusions are destroyed.  
> -Or-  
> How to make friends and lose your sanity.

Uncle Kaoru told her not to worry about anything at all, his eyes gone blank as he stared a thousand yards away. All Tomoe needed to do was focus on her education and helping Michiko grow up to be a fine, upstanding young lady like Tomoe herself. He had arranged it so literally everything would be taken care of. If Tomoe ignored how her uncle twitched and stared at the wall, then it was all fine.

(Everything was  _ not fine _ in Kaoru’s world. But he couldn’t exactly renege on that kind of prior arrangement.)

So what if he dropped his nieces off at the local mall with more yen than sense and drove off with a flippant wave of his hand that ‘he would be back in two hours’? Uncle Kaoru got it taken care of, and Tomoe was supposed to simply appreciate the fact. And really, she did appreciate that she had a list of literal allowances to her ‘condition’ that seemed custom tailored to keep her penis safely under wraps. Oddly, Uncle Kaoru seemed to have convinced the school administration that she had been severely traumatized by events in her early childhood and thus couldn’t stand anyone seeing her in any state of undress.

This was wonderful. Tomoe wouldn't have to  _ enlighten _ any of her teachers like she had Tomada-sensei. As long as she was sensible and maintained a decent grade average, she could even leave class early to change clothes for gym. Win-win scenario.

Except she was going to have to actually care about her schoolwork. That part had been stressed rather pointedly by Kusakabe-san during her impromptu orientation. This arrangement would only hold if she behaved and didn't continue with her unspoken status of a problem child.

Fine. It wasn't like the academic rigors of a third grader were all that strenuous. Technically she shouldn't even be a third grader, what with her lackluster academic performance and taking the tail end of the school year off due to sudden orphaning. But it had taken time to find a daycare for Michiko while Uncle Kaoru the Degenerate went to work and Tomoe went to school, and so Uncle Kaoru had to make arrangements for that too.

It was kind of funny how Kusakabe-san would say ‘arrangement’ and Uncle Kaoru would blink and lick at his lips nervously.

Standing in front of her new class, Tomoe had a sudden urge to head for the proverbial hills. Namimori Elementary School’s class 3-B was full of a bunch of twitchy little brats who perked up immensely at the thought of fresh blood.

There was something about the name that made Tomoe giggle. Perhaps it was that she was now living in a town that shared its name with a manga town. Or perhaps it was her unexplainable urge to start singing about green trails and tiny yellow birds.

Instead, she held the pleated edges of her skirt and bowed. “My name is Shimizu Tomoe, transferring from Okabe. I will be in everyone's care.” Just because she didn't like to talk to people that were technically her age didn't mean she didn't know how.

“Well, Shimizu-san, welcome to Namimori. If you would take a seat… yes, the seat next to Sasagawa-kun will do.” She blinked slowly and stared at the boy who sprang to his feet with a blush on his cheeks. Huh. Well, turned out cosplay tendencies in Japan started early. Who knew.

Great, her seatmate was a cosplay fanatic. Not that she really had any room to judge, what with her whole gender fluidity and questionable problem child status. If the kid wanted to run around dressed like a tiny Sasagawa Ryohei, that was fine. It still wasn't as extreme as the little boy who came to preschool for a month with a Godzilla mask on. At least this kid was benign.

“IT IS EXTREMELY NICE TO MEET YOU! I’M SASAGAWA RYOHEI!” Sweet ancient god responsible for the ancestral rites of Namimori, this child’s default volume was set to eleven out of a scale of ten. Tomoe blinked at him for a long moment while she waited for the ringing in her ears to fade. It said something about her new class that no one looked concerned that he was so very  _ loud _ while trying to play nice.

Tomoe smiled. An actual smile, not the one she kept giving the adults that was more predator baring their teeth. The boy blushed harder, so she proceeded to turn up her smile to eleven just to match the volume he had started with. It made her face hurt and her eyes crinkle weirdly to smile as brightly as her mother and Michiko did naturally, but it was well worth it. “Call me Tomoe. May I call you Ryohei-kun?”

“EXTREMELY YES!”

“We’re going to be great neighbors. I am in your care, Ryohei-kun.” She bowed to the flustered boy before quietly taking her seat, carefully tucking her skirt against her legs as she sat. If the adults wanted her to play nice, fine, she would. She’d make friends if it killed her.

It might actually kill her inside to interact with so many ridiculous eight and nine year olds. Her inner maternal urges would have her adopting the whole class at the rate of friendliness that Uncle Kaoru expected of her. So instead she would just hyper focus her attention on a select few souls who could probably benefit from having an actual friend.

People like the over excited Sasagawa Ryohei cosplayer.

Weird how his name was apparently actually Sasagawa Ryohei. Or, and this was most probable, he was under the same kind of arrangement that Tomoe was. She could work with that.

Tomoe pulled her school supplies out of her bag, carefully arranging the cute pastel pink supplies just so on her desk. Pencil and eraser went to the left side of her desk, case across the top, and notebook dead center as she cracked open its spine with brutal efficiency. “Ryohei-kun? May I share books with you for this class?”

He picked up his desk with what he probably thought was a manly grunt of exertion and settled it next to her desk with a clatter. Tomoe brushed her hair behind her ears and did her absolute best to pretend that the tittering from her new classmates wasn’t happening.

(This was far easier than it should be, for the girl simply  _ didn’t care _ for the useless opinions of the mindless tiny humans.)

“Thank you, Ryohei-kun,” she rewarded with a lilt and a crooked smile.

He really needed to stop blushing so much. All that blood flow to his head would probably cause him to have an aneurysm at the tender age of nine and it would be all her fault. Her pencil danced across her knuckles as she flipped the textbook pages to the point her new teacher called out, mind already going numb as the droning commenced.

Tomoe paid much more attention to their lessons than Ryohei did. Where his notes were covered in unintelligible scribbles and half-hearted doodles, hers were a lesson in obsessive compulsive disorder. The bell calling them all to lunch was met with a sudden upsurge in people surrounding Tomoe’s desk, each one of them clamoring at her with a question. Some had a few rapid fire questions, others were repeating questions already asked by others, and generally the raucous din was starting to drive her a little bit mental.

So. Annoyingly. Loud.

She raised her hand, cool as a glacier, and smiled.

This was not a smile that she would turn on that poor cosplaying child next to her. Instead it was a smile that promised swift retribution on those who failed to adhere to basic social courtesies, and she was not afraid to take her shoe off and lay into some heads to achieve it. “One. At. A. Time. Please.”

It was not a request.

As one, almost as if someone had trained it into them, their mouths clamped shut and they stared at her. Tomoe’s smile gentled from razor sharp back down to halfway socially acceptable. “Very good. Name, question. Please pick a good one, and please do not repeat a previously asked one. I will be very…  _ cross _ if you do.”

Goodness, she was really getting into the spirit of things. Tomoe blamed Ryohei entirely for this.

“And then I’ll  _ bite you to death _ .”

Silence. Merciful, sweet, glorious silence blanketed the room as her classmates began to frantically look from the pretty girl to the doors like they were planning desperate escape routes. Tomoe could have sworn a few of them met eyes and plotted with their eyebrows to help each other out of the windows if needs must. But that would be ridiculous. A single catchphrase from a not even that well known manga should not have reduced a bunch of children to a pack of terrified sheep.

Oh.

She was  _ really _ bad at this smiling thing then. Tomoe resolved herself to spending another few hours in front of her mother’s old hand mirror practicing the art of contorting her face into a much more pleasant configuration.

She balanced her chin on her palms, sighing as the children flinched at her slightest move. “Too much? Ryohei-kun, was that too much? I’m sorry, I’m not very good at playing this game.” The boy in question stared at her like Christmas had come early before pumping his fist higher into the air than was really necessary.

“YOU’RE EXTREMELY FUNNY TOMOE-CHAN!”

Her head slipped out of her grip, banging solidly on the hardwood of her desk. Forget smiling practice; there was a goal that was a much more worthy pursuit: fixing Ryohei’s eternal volume problem. Her eardrums would not survive this constant onslaught, especially not if she was as determined to be his friend as she had been that morning.

Some of the girls seemed to go through some rapid mental calculations, the sort that made conversations over lunch stilted and awkward. What should have been a delicious and harmonious meal had been turned into a testing of the proverbial waters as the class tried to sound out their new member.

It wasn’t boding well.

Shimizu Tomoe didn’t like small talk.

“Ah, Tomo-chan-”

Up went her hand. “Please do not call me so familiarly. Shimizu-san will do.”

The girl tried again as their teacher’s eyes began to narrow. “Ah… that’s… a bit cold, isn’t it? We’re your new friends.”

“I don’t know you, nor have I given you permission to be so familiar. Honestly, are you going to be this rude the entire time?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Then speak clearly in a way that everyone can understand.” Tomoe had not forgotten the truly annoying tendencies of children her age, and she was perfectly fine with satisfying the absolute bare minimum necessary to maintain the delicate balance of the Degenerate’s Arrangement. One friend. She could manage one friend. His name, or at least what he was preferring to be called, was Sasagawa Ryohei. Tomoe had zero problems with being friends with a tiny child who idolized that character and was even willing to go along with it.

In the murky backwaters of her mind, she remembered wanting to grow up to be the Pink Ranger and the three weeks she had spent in a cape made of a towel as she pretended to be Batman. What a terrible hypocrite she would be if she wouldn’t begrudge an overly exuberant child a chance to pretend for just a moment longer.

The girl, face plain and name something Tomoe hadn’t been gifted with before the child had begun to be so very rude, turned a startling shade of scarlet. Tomoe took a slow sip of her milk and set it down before turning in her seat properly to look at the girl. Said girl gaped like a fish as Tomoe’s hand went up again, fingers flicking up one at a time as she illustrated her point.

“Firstly, when addressing someone by name it is common courtesy to give them your name first. This is a basic principle of society.” The finger wiggled as she moved on. “Secondly, do not automatically give a stranger a nickname. It is not cute.” The second finger wiggled with the first. “Thirdly, do not automatically assume that anyone  _ wants _ to be your friend because you are within the same peerage. Are you automatically friends with the children across town? No.” Three fingers waggled at the other girl as Tomoe smiled viciously at her. “Please learn these basic societal rules for your safety and the harmony of Japan.”

“That isn’t fair!”

“That’s pointless. Life. Is. Not. Fair. Does anyone have any meaningful questions to ask, or shall we gratefully partake of the most splendid food made for our lunch?”

A boy across the room tentatively raised his hand with a look of sheer terror warring with pure stubbornness. Tomoe gently inclined her head in his direction and he leapt to his feet with a truly alarming amount of enthusiasm. “Namimori Elementary School’s Class 3-B, Hanabi Rintarou! Shimizu-san, do you know Hibari Kyoya?!”

What.  _ What? _ Today must be ‘play into the delusions’ day. Tomoe scowled. “That… is a pointless question. Honestly, what do you think?”

The room went silent again, and the boy blanched before quickly sitting back down. Eyebrow communication returned as the children plotted out their escape routes around an oblivious Tomoe. For her part, Tomoe was much more interested in keeping Ryohei from speed eating any of his food with clever smacks of her chopsticks against the backs of his fingers. This had the unintended consequence of turning the gesture into a new kind of contest between them.

Tomoe was surprisingly quick about smacking away at his hands. She was pretty sure the boy was messing with her, and her eyes narrowed in concentration. There was no way she was going to let a  _ nine year old _ beat her.

Lunch was a startlingly quiet affair as each of the students tried their absolute best to keep Tomoe from noticing them and making their day even more traumatizing than it could be. It was one thing entirely to be in a class with Sasagawa Ryohei, famous since kindergarten for being overly exuberant and quick to fight. But it was something else entirely to be in a classroom with a new transfer student who promised to  _ bite them to death _ and clearly had some sort of familiar association with the one entity that filled them with terror.

Namimori Elementary School, class 4-C, Hibari Kyoya. Ten years old and with a marked displeasure for crowding and other herbivorous activities, Hibari was already well known for literally biting people to death with his nearly signature wooden tonfa. It didn’t help that half the school was pretty sure that he was some scion of a yakuza group and the other was convinced he was some rich conglomerate’s illegitimate child, what with the obvious favoritism the administration gave him and the casual way he went through clothing.

After lunch, as the desks were put back in their original places, Ryohei nonchalantly settled his desk right back next to Tomoe. The girl smiled warmly at him, a marked difference of affection that she clearly did not intend to show to the rest of the class.

(As the days went by class 3-B became absolutely convinced that the only person even permitted to breathe the same air as the pink haired terror was Sasagawa Ryohei and they adjusted accordingly.)

They even cleaned together, a frightening combination that was determined to see the area they were assigned as absolutely spotless. Ryohei would loudly cover the most area and Tomoe would calmly wipe down on the fine details that he had missed. She insisted they rinse and repeat this treatment until  _ she could see her reflection _ or she would be cross.

When class ended, Ryohei casually slung an arm across her shoulders. “YOU SHOULD EXTREMELY COME MEET MY SISTER!”

She laughed. “Well, I don’t know if I can manage  _ extremely _ , but I would be more than happy to make her acquaintance.” Gently she ducked out from under his arm, casually resettling her shirt across her shoulders. Tomoe strove to live her life in a way that would give her degenerate uncle hives, and allowing herself to be wrinkled and touched by the ‘opposite’ gender was a gateway to his approval. He would have to settle for the fact that she had a single friend. Though if she played her cards right, she might be able to swing a second friend out of Ryohei’s little sister. And that would cause her uncle unspeakable amounts of distress, as he thought she was completely incapable of any kind of positive social interaction.

It wouldn’t do to allow Shimizu Kaoru to think he knew  _ anything _ at all about his niece. That would ruin the whole game.

So she was quite happy to follow after Ryohei, down the hall and to the left to class 2-B. Funny. It was like the universe was laughing at her. No wonder the boy was so comfortable in his cosplay tendencies. He had an actual little sister who…

Huh. All right then. Cosplaying was either a family thing or genetics were hilarious to the Sasagawas. “THIS IS MY EXTREME LITTLE SISTER, KYOKO!” He proudly placed the girl in question in front of Tomoe, who blinked and attempted to process this new information. Judging by the lack of any sign of exasperation on the younger child’s face, clearly this wasn’t something new. Ryohei really was a cosplay nut who existed entirely within the depth and breadth of his character. She almost wanted to applaud his truly excellent method acting. Daniel Day Lewis would be proud of this child.

Tomoe bowed, prim and proper even as her pigtails swayed. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Shimizu Tomoe. I transferred into your brother’s class this morning from Okabe.”

Kyoko, tiny little slip of a girl that she was, giggled. Her resemblance to her character was truly amazing. Eight years old and clearly not a single dyed hair in sight, she was almost made for the role. She smiled warmly at Tomoe, and Tomoe could almost see the sparkles and floral background appear behind her. That was what a real smile was like. “Hello! I’m Sasagawa Kyoko. I’m so glad you’re going to be my big brother’s friend.”

Sweet merciful Jesus take the wheel. There were two of them. What deity had she offended to end up with two weirdos as her mandatory new friends? Well, she wasn’t really one to judge. Tomoe still distinctly recalled that between her legs lay a bit of anatomy that belied her claim to be an absolute girl, and then there was that one special secret that she would likely be taking to her grave. So what if her new friends were cosplay nuts? At least they were genuinely nice people.

Tomoe smiled at Kyoko. It wasn’t nearly as warm as the smile the younger girl could manage, still giving off that bare edge of viciousness, but she was still trying. “She’s… adorable. Ryohei, how in the world did you manage to have such a kind little sister?”

“I AM EXTREMELY LUCKY!” He thumped his chest proudly, nose in the air and a grin splitting his face.

Kyoko let out a long suffering sigh that sisters everywhere could interpret as a sign of far too much bragging. Tomoe laughed. “You know. I’ve got a little sister too. Her name’s Michiko. I will concede that your sister is… maybe half as cute.”

“MY SISTER IS EXTREMELY CUTER!”

“My sister is literally two years old and still sleeps with me because she’s scared of the dark.”

“KYOKO CAN SLEEP BY HERSELF!”

“My little sister is still at the age that she needs train sounds to eat anything.”

“KYOKO EATS ALL HER VEGETABLES ON HER OWN!”

“Michiko can’t walk without toddling like a penguin.”

“KYOKO WON SECOND PLACE IN LAST YEAR’S RACE!”

“Oh? Let me show you the pictures from her second birthday.”

Tomoe and Ryohei stood with their arms crossed, nose to nose and toes touching as they blocked the hallway. Kyoko merely blinked and tugged at her big brother’s sleeve and then Tomoe’s, increasing the strength until they both looked at her. Someone could probably weaponize Kyoko’s smile against the pair of older siblings. “I want to meet Michiko. Can I?”

“May. May you meet Michiko. And yes… I suppose you can.” Tomoe tapped at her chin and thought out loud for just a moment. “I mean… I’d have to run it by the Deg- Uncle. Probably your parents. Definitely your parents.”

“OUR PARENTS WILL EXTREMELY NOT MIND!”

Kyoko shook her head with what even Tomoe had to admit was an adorable noise of rejection. “I’ll ask when we get home!” Their impromptu contest had been graciously ignored by their peers and Kyoko’s declaration was met with nods from all involved parties. Tomoe would ask the Degenerate for his permission and the Sasagawa siblings would ask their parents for theirs. For two nine year olds and an eight year old, this was a marvelous plan.

They traded out their shoes at the door and Tomoe stopped dead in the door as the unthinkable was presented before her eyes. “No. No. No. No,” she moaned between gritted teeth. This could not be happening, but it very clearly was.

“Tomoe!” There, past the crowd of chattering children and the stupefied teachers, was an idiot. He’d shaved off the monstrosity of scruff on his face for her initial transfer meeting, and somewhere in the time between then and that moment he had gotten a brush applied to his hair. Uncle Kaoru still had lingering traces of the product he had used to slick his black hair back. Those traces, combined with the overall freakishly stylish clothes he usually wore and the ridiculous sunglasses on his face, left an undeniable impression she’d  _ desperately _ been trying to avoid. “Tomoe!”

He’d brought the car. Not his old one, oh no, as that would have been  _ reasonable _ and not a public menace.

Uncle Kaoru had spent part of his inheritance from his brother on a brand new sport sedan with every safety feature he could add on. What he ended up with was a brilliant cherry red vehicle that made Tomoe cringe to look at it.

“Tomoe!”

Kyoko looked curiously up at the other girl’s rapidly reddening face. “Tomoe-senpai? Do you know this person?”

“I wish I could say I didn’t.” A little part of her soul died as her uncle made direct eye contact and waved in her general direction. “That’s… my uncle.” She could see the reflection of her uncle’s new fanclub in the polish of the car’s door, but didn’t want to contemplate when he had the time to have it cleaned.

Ryohei had stars in his eyes as he stared at her uncle, perched on the hood of his car with her little sister balanced precariously on his knee. “HE’S EXTREMELY COOL!”

Tomoe was swift to elbow the boy in his ribs with a savage jab. “No he’s not. He’s really. Really. Not.” Just that morning she had caught him in the kitchen with nothing but his boxers on, staring at a frying pan and wondering how to get charcoal off the surface without scratching the teflon. He said they were eggs, but there was very clearly a container of miso stock in his hands and a spread of condiments across the countertop that made her visibly cringe to think of.

“Tomoe! I can see you, you know!”

She had tried to keep Kyoko and Ryohei between her and the crowd, relying on the boy’s innate ability to shine in the middle of a crowd to let her slink around to somewhere that wasn’t here. That plan survived as long as a snowball in the middle layers of Purgatory, scattered to the four corners of the world by the untimely addition of Shimizu Kaoru. She sighed as Ryohei rubbed at his ribs. “Well… might as well get this over with. Come on you two.”

Kyoko skipped. Ryohei walked. Tomoe tried to shrink herself into the tiniest ball possible. She cut into the crowd with the swift application of a few well placed ‘excuse me’s and a few bows. Oddly, there were quite a few older women who had decided to stop and see what was going on. Even more curiously was the addition of Kusakabe. The very same Kusakabe that had made sure she was enrolled properly and took the time to accommodate the myriad of demands she had.

Why was her uncle blushing so hard?

It wasn’t like the moms around were saying something awful. If anything, they just thought he was some rich actor they’d never heard of that was here to raise his kids in a quiet community.

Shimizu Kaoru had been in Namimori all of his adult life. These were his neighbors. He wrote articles for the Namimori Times and worked part time somewhere she wasn’t supposed to know about. The only thing worse than the fact that her uncle was so obviously embarrassed was the fact that none of the actual adults in the community could recognize his face. Well, that and his complete inability to care for himself in any way that didn’t resort to convenience store food and bothering his dates to cook him breakfast in bed. (She had seen that once. Nice lady, for all the fact that without all her makeup on her Adam’s apple stood out far too much in the light of day and her underwear were backwards.)

Her uncle flashed Kusakabe a smile that made her shudder. Reprobate failure of a human being was trying to do some complex mating dance of his people in broad daylight. Disgusting to say the least. At least she didn’t have to stay around that for very long.

“Hm? Tomoe, did you make friends?”

“Yes. Two. Ryohei is from class, Kyoko is his little sister. I have made friends,” she intoned as the smile on Kaoru’s face turned from raunchy to a level of emotion she wasn’t equipped to analyze.

He carefully placed Michiko on the ground, sliding off the hood of the car and using his knees as a back support just in case the toddler decided walking wasn’t her favorite thing anymore. Kaoru bowed with that same grin at the other two children. “Thanks for being friends with Tomoe here.”

“I told you I could make friends.”

“We’re happy to know her!”

“SHE’S MY EXTREME BEST FRIEND!”

Oh. Something in her ribcage started hurting. Must have put on too tight of a shirt that morning. Or maybe she pulled something trying to vault the hurdle in gym class. Statistically speaking, if you were a child’s  _ only _ friend, then you were clearly their best friend.

Kaoru ruffled at Tomoe’s pigtails and she scowled up at him. He chuckled as he held his hands up to his shoulders. “My bad, my bad.”

Tomoe had an evil thought, and she tried her very best not to hurt herself laughing while she put it into practice. “Do it again and I’ll  _ bite you to death _ .”

Kusakabe turned a shade of white that was usually reserved for the dead as he took a step back and away from the little girl. She turned her head just in time to see him visibly scanning her, hands loose at his sides and his knees slightly bent. It was like he was preparing himself to flee and sacrifice everyone else for his safety.

None of the other adults looked any better.

Ryohei, on the other hand, was delighted. His head went back and he laughed hard enough for the birds three telephone poles down to take flight in their terror. Kyoko had to take a step back as her brother fell to the floor, laughing so hard he started to cry. “THAT’S EXTREMELY FUNNY!”

“Wao.”

Ryohei laughed harder, enough so that Kyoko crouched down and tried to make soothing noises to calm him down. “There, there big brother.”

“Ah… Tomoe? Maybe… don’t say that?” Kusakabe vigorously nodded along with Kaoru’s tremulous plea. “It’s… not exactly nice to say to people.”

She glared. “Bite you to death? Hahi? Ushishishi? Kufufu? Or I could call people trash. Maybe ciaossu? Eh, it’s pointless. Ryohei thinks it’s funny.”

Kusakabe cleared his throat, loud enough to cut into the strange familial argument. “Shimizu-chan, those aren’t the sorts of things we encourage our students to say.”

“Why?” She crossed her arms as spared a glance down at her feet to check if Ryohei was still alive. As he miraculously seemed to be more focused on laughing than he was dying, she considered him safe enough. “It isn’t like anyone will care.”

“My little cousin has a classmate who- let’s just say he isn’t an upperclassman you should not be emulating. Ever.”

“Oh. Well that’s different. Ryohei, how long are you going to stay down there? Because my little sister is right there and this is not the kind of behavior I want her to have later.” This was probably a bit hypocritical coming from someone who just used a catchphrase as a conversational threat, but there had to be limits to the absurdity. She frowned over her shoulder at the throng of students, teachers, and the occasional mother. Of course the Degenerate would attract attention to himself at a school of all things.

Objectively, Tomoe could acknowledge that her uncle was attractive. She dreaded the day her little sister got into the concept of marriage and tried having a crush on anyone who even resembled Uncle Kaoru. Under all that pretty flash was a disgusting human being with  _ terrible _ life skills. Tomoe refused to let Michiko idolize him.

Michiko stood on the tops of Kaoru’s sneakers, arms raised as she gripped onto his fingers and giggled. Their uncle was bouncing on his heels and he didn’t even look like he was thinking about it. Ugh. She hated it. So annoying. Why did Michiko have to like him out of every adult in their family? Aunt Hana would have been better, distant relation or not. She at least ran a business and had her husband’s balls in her purse. But no.

Instead they got Uncle Kaoru.

Kaoru of the two jobs, where only one was probably legal. Kaoru of the brings home his one night stands in a house with two children. Kaoru of the laughing at her friend.

She’d happily kick him in the shin if she wasn’t afraid of hitting Michiko at the same time.

Kusakabe shooed them all off with another of those weird smiles he only has with her uncle. Seriously, it was strange and made her want to bare her teeth at a grown man. What right did he have to make her uncle blush like that? The only person allowed to cause that much emotional strife in Uncle Kaoru was her.

It was somewhat vexing that in order to be taken seriously, Hisamaru had become Tomoe and buried themselves under the veneer of a somewhat respectable young lady. Respectable young ladies did not look at the school administration and want to mark their territory to keep him away from her uncle. Hisamaru would have had no problems with that; Tomoe clearly was not allowed to do things of that nature.

So instead she neatly stepped around Kusakabe like he wasn’t even there, brought her hands down and wiggled her fingers until Michiko got the hint. Kusakabe wasn’t wanted in her weird family picture. No thank you sir, whatever arrangement you had with her uncle did not need to be repeated. Ryohei seemed like the type to laugh for hours if he was left to his own devices.

If she is going to make friends with weird cosplay children, her little sister had better like them. Michiko is her world, the tiny bundle of joy that her parents had died to protect.

(Hisamaru remembered Mother’s face as she handed Michiko to them to be changed.  _ She’s your responsibility, _ before she went to help their father with the car. Hisamaru would do anything to honor that.)

She dropped her baby sister on Ryohei’s stomach and ignored her uncle’s breathy inhale. Tomoe had decided to trust someone. If this boy stayed true to his character, she would never be able to find a better protector.

The world was a dangerous place and she couldn't possibly hope to keep Michiko safe all on her own.

Ryohei flailed for a moment. But even in his panic he recognized a tiny human being on his abdomen and didn't throw her off. Good. “This is Michiko. She’s two.”

There was an unspoken language between older siblings. He’d showed her his, so she showed him hers. Tomoe inclined her head just a smidge towards Kyoko, and the look between Ryohei and Tomoe was enough.

_ I’ll help with yours, if you help with mine. _

A flurry of movement behind her had Tomoe turning her head to stare incredulously at her uncle and the school administrator. As far as she could tell, Kusakabe wanted to make her uncle quit trying to take an obscene amount of photos with a camera she wasn’t even aware he owned and Kaoru was fighting him every step of the way.

“Adults are extremely weird.” It was a miracle. Ryohei spoke at a volume that wasn’t cranked up to eleven. His version of a whisper appeared to be what everyone else considered to be a pleasant speaking tone. Perhaps Tomoe should knock the wind out of him with her sister more often. It wasn’t like Michiko was really heavy.

She was two, not even three feet tall, and weighed about twenty pounds. Tomoe took a perverse pleasure in allowing Michiko to choose her own clothes - with particular appreciation for the more eye searing combinations that made Uncle Kaoru cringe- and her ugly zebra pattern shirt and jean shorts weren’t exactly the heaviest clothes. At least Michiko had left her little sneakers in the car.

“That they are. I should probably… head home. We have  _ homework _ ,” she groaned out through her teeth like the mere thought of homework was an affront to every major and minor deity in the entirety of human existence. Besides, if she kept sticking around Ryohei for too long, her uncle would get  _ ideas _ that would be entirely wrong. Tomoe was perfectly fine with keeping Ryohei as ‘that weird childhood friend’ and Kyoko as ‘the adorable little sister of weird childhood friend’. She wiggled her fingers and whistled sharply.

Michiko’s head snapped around as she tottered to stand on Ryohei’s stomach. “Toto!” She grabbed at Tomoe’s hand and giggled as Tomoe leaned down to pick her up. “Up up!”

“Yes, yes. I’ve got you. Ryohei… not a word. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“YES TO THE EXTREME!”

“It was nice to meet you, Tomoe-senpai! Bye-bye Michiko!”

“Bye!” Michiko waved to her new friends over Tomoe’s shoulder as her sister bustled her off into the car. For her part, Tomoe was more than content to blissfully ignore her uncle as she strapped Michiko and herself into their respective seats in the car.

Kaoru looked like he was about to have a stroke on the spot from joy, mouth gaping like a fish before stretching into a grin that just made Tomoe want to kick him in the shin more. He kept glancing back in the rear view mirror to see Tomoe’s reaction. Michiko thought it was all hilarious as she kept up her chanting of ‘Toto, Toto’ until Tomoe looked at her properly. They managed to avoid any kinds of questions on the ride home by virtue of sheer precedence alone. Kaoru had learned the hard way that child locks meant nothing to someone determined to avoid ‘pointless’ questions. Tomoe could and would climb over him to let herself out of the passenger door.

Instead he waited. There was still the chance that the Sasagawa siblings would come to their senses and realize exactly how socially ungifted his niece was and leave her for greener and more hospitable pastures. The days crawled by as Kaoru fretted. At some point, someone was going to realize how very ill prepared Tomoe was to deal with her peers.

But she had to figure out how to make a friend by herself.

So he did her hair every morning, brushed out the pink mess and tied it into its now familiar pigtails. He had breakfast waiting (usually courtesy of a one-night stand or some variety of convenience store food), and he dropped her off every day at school before taking Michiko to daycare.

And he waited.

For two whole weeks, everything in the Shimizu household was world-shakingly normal. Tomoe had even started to allow her uncle the privilege of ‘helping’ with her with Michiko. Life was almost perfect.

Two weeks and one day after Tomoe had transferred into Namimori Elementary School, everything went to hell in a handbasket on express delivery. Instead of picking up his niece like normal, his on-going one-night stand called him to pick her up early.

Tomoe had gotten into a fight.

Tomoe had  _ lost  _ said fight.

Tomoe  _ wanted to do it again _ .

_ The boy she had fought with had agreed. _

As best as anyone could tell from the rumor mill of an elementary school and the somewhat lacking testimony of Tomoe that required massive bribes to attain the full details on, Tomoe had actually  _ started _ said fight. From what Kaoru knew of his niece, this was a horrifying change from the norm. Sure, she was socially awkward and vicious when she wanted to be, but the girl was generally the sort who only fought when someone else needed protected. She’d done it before for the bullied girl in her last class. Multiple times with escalating violence until her classmates had learned the painful lesson to just leave that girl be.

Sometime during the switch from third period to fourth, on her way to change her clothes in the staff restroom, Shimizu Tomoe had encountered what she called a ‘minor technical difficulty’ in maintaining the terms of her arrangement.

Apparently it was against school policy for students to be in the halls without a pass, and an even more egregious breach of the rules for a lone female student to be using the staff restroom.

This much Kaoru had gathered as he slapped a bag of frozen peas to Tomoe’s eye.

One student in particular, who Tomoe was quick to point out was a hypocrite in the exact same position as she was, had taken offense to that many rule violations. As far as she could tell, her status as a transfer student was not enough to exempt her. Even worse was that she had told the other student that she had permission from Kusakabe, which had aggravated the student even more.

Supposedly Kusakabe, as in the  _ entire family _ belonged to one student. Well, as Tomoe explained it, it was more like the Kusakabe family functioned like some weird vassals to the family of this particular student. Thus, by the Shimizu entering into an arrangement that broke so many rules without properly consulting this family, both the Shimizu and the Kusakabe were wrong in the eyes of this particular child.

Tomoe had apparently corrected this oversight. She said something about ‘spoils of war’ and an arrangement of her own. (Given the raised brow and judgemental silence, Kaoru had a terrible feeling that euphemisms were not going to last very long, and that she had only been giving him the illusion of a successful fiction so he could keep at least some pride.)

What Kaoru couldn’t understand was why his niece had suddenly gone into a hysterical fit upon the other student actively fighting her.

Well that wasn’t quite right.

Tomoe had told the other student her name in the hopes that it would help solidify her credentials. That had backfired. The other student had then called her an ‘herbivore’ (which offended Tomoe for reasons Kaoru didn’t understand or  _ want _ to understand) and pulled out a pair of tonfa.

Around that point in the story is when Kaoru stopped having faith in his niece’s ability to navigate any kind of social situation.

In response to weapons being drawn, Tomoe had attempted to do similarly. As all she had on her person was her clothes, Tomoe had improvised. She was quite proud of herself for getting ‘first hit’ by whatever means necessary.

Tomoe had panicked and grabbed the first remotely useful thing she saw and thrown it at the other student’s head. Somehow she managed to connect squarely with the boy’s forehead even as he ran at her. On anyone else, this would have been impressive. On Tomoe? This was temporary insanity.

He had clocked her in the face with his tonfa, hence her black eye, and Tomoe had gotten snippy. Apparently, and neither Kaoru or Kusakabe could figure out the logic of this, it was  _ unspeakably rude _ to spar without actually introducing yourself after your opponent had. So she had called him on his poor manners.

And then kicked him in the balls.

She had promptly seen stars as the boy had delivered a brutal uppercut right to her chin.

And after he was done cringing, as that was a new pain, he had given her his name.

Once he had kicked her in the ribs and stomach, he had decided her worth was questionable.

So of course Tomoe had sassed off, blood dripping off her face and her eyes swelling shut. Of course his niece had told him that she would  _ see Hibari Kyoya on Friday for another spar _ . And because the universe hated him with every fiber of its being,  _ of course Hibari Kyoya said yes. _


	3. Hitsuzen - Inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the inevitable conclusion has been drawn.  
> -Or-  
> Cleanup on aisle four.

Sasagawa Ryohei’s real name was, in actual fact, Sasagawa Ryohei. He and his sister were not pre-adolescent cosplay freaks. Namimori did not share its name with a fictional town, because it was the fictional town.

Everything was real and it was both too much and everything they needed at the same time.

Something fantastic had happened, something outside of human comprehension and so far away from comforting that it was grounding.

It made sense.

They remembered strange things, impossible things now they thought about it.

Now that Hibari Kyoya had seen fit to knock the cobwebs and delusions from their mind.

They were only a singular instance of an ungendered plural pronoun because of the impossible, because they remembered. And oh how much they remembered. Because if they remembered correctly, from faded newsprint pages and broken spined books perused over a decade ago, this was a world of seven impossible things before breakfast.

A world of mafioso and magical fire, assassins and rings, the Seven Strongest Babies and the Tri-Ni-Sette. This was a world that ran on Dying Will and sacrifice. And somehow, because clearly the universe hated them, they had ended up in this world in the same generation as a giant pile of drama waiting to happen. What were the odds?

(They’d calculated it somewhere near the statistical likelihood of life on other planets while they waited for the swelling on their eye to go down enough for them to reheat their dinner in the microwave.)

Really, they were kind of… cheating. They knew one version of the future, imperfect as it was and distorted by the passage of time, and had already begun to affect it. They’ve made ripples in the pond, and might as well see it through to the end.

It’s been nine years and they still remembered why they were  _ wrong _ and everything wouldn’t get better. Loretta Davis had died at the ripe old age of fifty-three of nothing so lethal as a diabetic seizure in the dark hours of the morning. She had been survived by her three children and four beautiful grandbabies. Loretta had no issues with passing on through the pearly gates. She’d lived a full and wonderful life. Sure, she hadn’t done everything she had wanted to before she died. But who did?

She did not expect to wake up in the infantile body of a little Japanese boy named Hisamaru. Now, she was familiar with the idea of an old soul, but this took the cake. Loretta was entirely too old to deal with this. Teething and potty training were all well and good when you went through them for your children and your grandbabies, but was a new level of embarrassing to go through for yourself. She was a grown ass woman, and she would be damned if she couldn’t piss in a toilet by herself.

But at least she got to eat sweets without worrying about her blood sugar levels, so that was nice.

Sorcha, bless her heart, had clearly tried. Poor baby didn’t know the first thing about raising children, and if she hadn’t been some kind of gangster as a child, Loretta would eat her shoe. So Hisamaru had tried to be kind to her, because honestly they couldn’t fathom leaving a baby like that to her own devices. 

Yahiro had been an embarrassment to the sanctity of his uniform. Drunk all the time and useless, taking bribes from the yakuza. He beat his child because they had pink hair and didn’t like doing boy things. (It was bad enough that Loretta had learned first hand how to piss as a boy, she’d be damned if she was going to waste her second chance on humoring the man over hobbies she didn’t care for.) He didn’t deserve to be called a father.

And Michiko? Michiko was Hisamaru’s  _ reason for being _ . Here was a precious child who entirely depended on them to keep them alive and happy. And they were entirely happy to do so.

They readjusted the bag of ice on their face and sighed. Reality wasn’t going to allow Hisamaru-Tomoe-Loretta the dignity of lying to themselves anymore.They were a boy with the soul of an old African American grandmother stuck in a world of magical fire and irresponsible adults as far as the eye could see. Somehow this would balance out whatever poor karma Loretta had attained in her last life. Or perhaps it was because all the children clearly needed someone to keep them alive and well grounded.

They could do that.

If they survived Hibari Kyoya.

Loretta would be the first to admit that she had only read and continued to read that comic book because her youngest daughter wouldn’t stop screaming about some boy named Mukuro and how she wanted to see him in compromising adult situations with that boy named Hibari. Loretta did not see the appeal, and hadn’t seen the appeal even after said comic book series had ended.

When Shaniqua cried because the ending was ‘unfulfilling’, Loretta had merely clicked her tongue and gone back to knitting. But her baby ‘shipped’ something called 1869, and out of solidarity Loretta had attempted to figure out the appeal.

Now that they had actually  _ seen _ Hibari Kyoya, they were forced to recognize the appeal. A dangerous boy who was going to grow up a looker, poor misunderstood boy with violent tendencies. Oh, they knew his type. Before, they would have said they were too old to appreciate that. Now they are far too young to have the hormones to appreciate the existence of Hibari Kyoya properly.

But what they did remember was that Hibari Kyoya was the bee’s knees. Apparently, if they remembered right, Loretta’s daughter had explained Hibari’s existence to her mother as that universe’s answer to the all mighty rage and power of Superman with all the emotional stability of a man-eating lion.

After having an impromptu fight with the boy, Hisamaru was forced to agree with that two decade old sentiment.

Hisamaru’s uncle thought they were completely insane for having made an arrangement to fight him again on Friday. They almost wanted to smack that man upside the head to catch him some sense. One did not survive the probable apocalypse by being timid. Besides which, this was their second chance at life. If they wanted to spend it comfortable in the knowledge that no one on God’s green Earth was going to be able to kill them, so be it.

So they needed to be on Hibari’s level of violence or die trying.

When in a ridiculous universe out of the mind of a Japanese person, one should use the logic of something else even more ridiculous to counter it.

One hundred push-ups. One hundred sit-ups. One hundred squats. Run ten kilometers. Every day. Eat three meals every day, replacing breakfast with a banana. Use no air conditioning. Rinse and repeat until death. (Or in Hisamaru’s case, until the threat of the apocalypse was done.)

But why stop there? This was their glorious second chance after all. Why just run ten kilometers when you could free-run ten kilometers? Why just focus on flat ground when there were perfectly good buildings to climb over and ricochet off of?

When in a universe with ridiculous laws of physics and reality, test the boundaries and surpass them.

By God, if they were going to do this, they were going to  _ go all the way. _ Shimizu Hisamaru was going to be the one person in the world who could go toe to toe with Hibari Kyoya on a twice weekly basis and walk away like a Parisian model.

Joining the mafia was for people who actually wanted to break the law, of which they were not one. No matter what happened or who tried, Hisamaru was going to loophole their way out of every single arrangement. Honor was for people who got shot in the back of the head. From that moment on, Hisamaru’s word was worth mud.

It was a bit weird that they wore the name of Tomoe like a second skin to be cast off when no longer useful, but that role was purely designed to be thrown away. No one was going to let a girl fight their battles for them. They’d just have to keep their public and private lives separate. And when all the dust settled and all the battles were done, then they could quietly go pack their bags and head to the United States where things at least made sense.

They could get a degree in underwater basket weaving for all they cared, but they were going to get a degree from a good school and get a good job and raise a whole passel of adorable babies and grandbabies. They’d take Michiko with them if they could, because no child deserved to be left alone with a man who couldn’t even be trusted to keep his affairs private.

The first morning was hell on earth. Every bone in their body had developed an exciting new level of soreness that wasn’t alleviated by even a cold soak. They hadn’t even made it to the fun of running, merely gone through sensible sets of alternating tens until they managed to make it to a hundred of each. Ten push-ups, then ten sit-ups, then ten squats. Repeated ten times over the course of two and a half precious hours before school. They had risen with the sun and regretted every yawn that pulled at their newly sore muscles.

Running would have to wait until after school.

School with Sasagawa Ryohei and Kyoko. Hisamaru was immensely glad that there was no official uniform at Namimori Elementary School, even as they threaded their rubbery arms through the holes of their ugliest sweater. Somehow the neon green polyester blend was the most comfortable fabric in the entirety of their wardrobe, weird three-legged cartoon unicorn or no. With every iota of their being feeling like overworked taffy, Hisamaru was more than happy to cede fashion to comfort for the foreseeable future.

“GOOD MORNING TO THE EXTREME, TOMOE-SAN!”

“Good morning, Tomoe-senpai!”

“Bonjour, Ryohei-san, Kyoko-san.”

“ARE YOU EXTREMELY ALRIGHT?”

Tomoe smiled ruefully as she laced up her shoes, fingers fumbling even as she tried her best. Perhaps she should have waited to begin her new extreme workout regime from the seventh circle of Hell. But where would the fun in that be? As far as Tomoe’s hazy memory went, she had up until the time some dichromatic eyed homosexual murder child beat the snot out of a bunch of students to get to a point of competency.

(In hindsight, Hibari Kyoya should never be used as a litmus test for competency.)

It was sweet how Ryohei hovered, hands waving about as he tried to figure out just how  _ damaged _ his friend was. “Thank you for asking. I’ll be fine.” She winced as she got to her feet and tried to smile away Ryohei and Kyoko’s helping hands. These children were just adorable. “I just got a little bit too carried away with training.”

An unholy fire lit behind Ryohei’s eyes as his fist clenched and he roared. “THAT’S SO EXTREME!”

Of course he was the sort of boy who got far too excited over the concept of  some sort of kung fu movie plot line. Of course he was. “Ah… I think you have the wrong idea-”

“TOMOE-SAN, YOU’RE EXTREMELY COOL!”

“No… listen. Please just listen-”

“WE CAN TRAIN TOGETHER TO THE EXTREME!”

“Ah… Sorry about my big brother, senpai.”

“Let’s just… get going. It’s pointless to argue with him.”

And so they left Ryohei in the entryway of the humble Shimizu house, just two girls giggling their way to school. Ryohei would catch up eventually.

The problem came in with dodging her uncle after school. She didn’t necessarily  _ like _ lying to the man, his terrible personal habits aside, but needs must. “Uncle, I’m going to hang out with Ryohei. I should be back in a few hours.”

Kaoru craned his head over the back of the sofa where he was being forced to sit through yet another rerun of Magical Girl Something-or-Other that Michiko loved more than life for some weird reason. “Huh?” Maybe it was weird that she had changed into clothes more commonly associated with overly energetic boys than with the pretty girl she was trying to portray. “What’s with the-”

“He wants to try boxing. I’m not wearing anything I want to keep,” she explained flatly. “Besides, all my homework’s already done. It’s on the table if you need to check it.” That wasn’t a lie. Tomoe had completely finished her homework in the forty-five minutes she had been home. Really, third grade work wasn’t complicated. Her worksheets still had pictures on them.

“Do you need me to-”

She smoothly cut him off with a shake of her head. It was weird to be wearing her hair in a ponytail instead of her usual long pigtails, but she needed the pink locks out of her way for this to succeed. “No thank you. I have everything under control.”

And Tomoe did. She’d filched a pedometer from her physical education teacher and strapped it to her wrist, tied up her hair, changed into a t-shirt and sweats, and generally looked like someone about to do an obscene amount of physical exercise. Which, to be completely honest, she really was. If she wanted to be on par with Hibari Kyoya she was going to need to go through a truly obscene amount of physical effort.

Let no one say Shimizu Tomoe was a quitter.

Her eyes were still blackened beyond belief and she had at least recovered from the pain she had put herself through just that morning. But the fact remained that she was going to be doing this every single day until the threat of the apocalypse ended or she died. Whichever came first. Hopefully the threat of the apocalypse came first.

It took her three hours of sweat, crying, internal screaming and agony, puking, minor moments of passing out while still moving, and even more agony to run ten kilometers. She made it home on wobbling legs just as the sun had finished setting and she almost cried at the satisfaction of finishing.

One cold bath later and she staggered her way to bed, resolutely setting her alarm for a fantastic four in the morning.

Her body screamed at her to stop as she began her new daily routine. And every day she had to remind herself that this was a world of do or die, and she would really rather not die. Again. Last time had been enough. Shimizu Tomoe was determined to live to see the other side of sixty the long way around, thank you very much.

By the time Friday rolled around, she had almost become acclimated to her new regime of forced torture. It was time to add in the next stage of her training:

Fighting Hibari Kyoya on a twice per week basis.

He had agreed to this particular fight, and she had slightly (by which she meant purposefully) antagonized him into the last one via a shoe to the face. The trick was to be interesting enough for him to willingly participate in literally beating her into shape.

Which meant she needed a weapon of some kind.

Preferably something she could get away with bringing to a school full of children who may or may not have  sustained as much brain damage as her best and only real friend her age had.

This meant anything with a blade or a sharpened edge was right out.

Tomoe was slightly miffed about that as she placed the poultry scissors back in the kitchen drawer with a sigh. She wasn’t going to win many fights with her shoe, as amusing as the shock on Hibari’s face had been, so that wasn’t going to be an option either. A dishrag was just reaching and coming up with a useless alternative. Chopsticks were for eating, and it wasn’t like there was a set of nunchucks lying around where children could get to them. Not that she’d be able to use them without knocking herself out in the process.

She’d have better luck bringing the kitchen mop to school-

No one could judge a child for bringing a mop to school.

Tomoe froze in the kitchen with a look of dawning horror on her face. A mop. She could just bring  _ a mop _ and smack some sense into Hibari.

It wasn’t like Hisamaru hadn’t done it before. Actually, it was sort of their calling card at their last school. Beware the grumpy child with mop in hand.

(Technically the last time they had been forced to lay hands on a child there hadn’t been a mop, and thus they had used a broom. But the principle was still sound.)

So she slung the kitchen mop, a sturdy thing made of metal with its own squeegee and pull lever, over her shoulder. And she brought it to school despite her uncle’s protests. “I need it for class.” Technically, being schooled by Hibari Kyoya was a class. It was just a completely voluntary one that no sane person ever opted to take.

Uncle Kaoru hadn’t actually been clued in on every tiny bit of equipment he would be expected to provide for his child’s education. He simply shrugged and waved her off as he bundled Michiko into the car and the Sasagawas barged their usual way into the Shimizu house. “Ah, Ryohei-kun, Kyoko-chan. Have a good day at school!”

And Tomoe had simply nodded and marched her doomed little self to school like a good lamb to the slaughter.

Hibari Kyoya met them at the gates.

“No. Nope. No. Bonjour. You can wait until after school for a fight. We are not going to be interrupting the educational process just so you can fight me. Learn patience.”

“Herbivore, I will-”

“ _ What part of wait did you not understand? _ Do you not speak Japanese? Did your parents or guardians not include that in your education? You do not call a lady an herbivore. You do not pressure a lady into a situation not of her own making. Wait. Your. Turn.”

“ _ I will bite you to death.” _

“After. School. Because there are  _ rules _ even you have to obey.”

In later hindsight, telling Hibari Kyoya what he could and could not do was suicide. Thus, the second time Shimizu Tomoe and Hibari Kyoya met started with a verbal altercation and ended with Tomoe fleeing for her life.

For reasons that were entirely beyond her comprehension, Tomoe had decided that her classroom was safety. Technically it even was, as Hibari had no idea who she was or what class she was in, aside from the fact that she wasn’t in his. So for all she cared, he could spend his day breaking into other people’s classrooms until Kusakabe was called to yell at him for interfering with other children’s educations.

Ironically, her classroom was entirely safe from Hibari. Not that anyone could tell, what with the clear distance every child kept from her as she calmly sat at her desk and took notes like she was a dedicated student. Funny how the threat of emminent pain could get one to focus on their studies.

The Hibari Kyoya at the gates after school was a much changed one. At first, he had been entirely on board with figuring out what in the world this strange girl had been talking about. But after school? After being lectured by the one adult who mattered in the school and hours of fruitless searching?

Now he wanted to beat the girl into the ground.

Tomoe completely understood the sentiment. She felt much the same way about the threat of income taxes she was going to have to worry about when she possibly made it to an age where that was a thing to worry about. The mop creaked ominously in her grip as she passed her school bag to Ryohei. “Bonjour, Hibari-san. I take it you have agreed to the terms of this arrangement?”

“Herbi-  _ You _ . I will  _ bite you to death _ .”

“Shimizu Tomoe. I do believe I told you this before. But I do believe that’s enough pleasantries, don’t you? Shall we begin?”

To put it quite bluntly: Hibari Kyoya beat the shit out of her. And yet again, she smacked him in the balls.

The mop was surprisingly effective. She lasted twice as long as she had the first time they fought, by virtue of sheer reach and her desperate need to dodge. Tomoe was quite proud of herself for dodging the first and seventh hit he threw at her, and even more proud of the fact that she had smacked him so hard in the head that he had actually had to take a moment to blink back into focus.

All hail the power of The Kitchen Mop.

She spat blood on the ground and grinned. “Excellent. See you again on Monday?”

Hibari stared like his world was coming to an abrupt end. No one  _ willingly _ came back for seconds, let alone proposing  _ thirds _ . Maybe it was because she was a female? Kusakabe had always harped about how females were all  _ insane _ and he pitied the one who set her sights on Kyoya. Was this… Tomoe person setting her sights on him? Was this what Kusakabe meant?

“Well? I can’t have hit you in the head that hard.”

No. Girls who like boys did silly things like fluttering their eyelashes and proposing marriage on the playground. This girl had done no such thing. If anything, it was like she wanted to test her teeth on him. Was this was playing was? Strange and yet somehow  _ fun _ because she kept coming back. “Hn.”

“Very well. Au revoir, Hibari-san.”

“Monday… After school. Fox.”

She was absurdly proud of the fact that Hibari was forced to limp for just one brief and glorious moment before he collected himself and stalked off to wherever he haunted during non-academic hours. Proud and battered, blood on her teeth from her split lip and head ringing, Tomoe had fought the beast and won. Tomoe supposed it counted as some form of victory that he had agreed to the terms of what promised to be a riveting arrangement. Sure, she was slumped on the ground with her hand clamped to her side like it would stop the unrelenting push and pull of pain that happened every time she breathed.

Ryohei stared at her with a sort of wonder one usually reserved for their personal heroes, and Tomoe sighed.

The gist of what he spouted at his eternal roar, as far as Tomoe could be trusted to focus on, was amazing in a horrifying way that she hadn’t expected.

Hibari Kyoya had no friends. What he did have was a single solitary Kusakabe his age named Tetsuya and a an older Kusakabe named Tetsuo who were both responsible for his well being and upbringing. It was strange enough that Tomoe had to stare unblinkingly at Ryohei until he gave a better explanation that was apparently  _ common sense _ to the residents of Namimori.

The Hibari family had been responsible for Namimori since the Koan era. Historically, they were the descendants of some of the Mongolian soldiers who invaded under Kublai Khan back in the Bun’ei era and had decided that they quite liked the Japanese people and stayed. The Hibari family had been adopted into the samurai caste and still held actual ties to China, what with the current Hibari heir’s grandmother being from Hong Kong. Officially, the samurai had been removed from power in the Meiji Restoration.

Unofficially, the Hibari had been in charge of Namimori since 1278 and had simply modernized with the new political systems.

The Hibari  _ owned _ Namimori. They still had a vassal family under their name, and a complex system of branch and main families that Ryohei didn’t understand.

It was all perfectly legal. Hibari Kotori, Kyoya’s mother, had been quite cheerfully elected by the populace. She hadn’t run unopposed, and had gracefully folded her opposition into her regime. Hibari Kotori held the same iron grip on Namimori that her grandfather had before her, tempered with the quintessential spirit of the Yamato Nadeshiko that all good Japanese girls aspired to.

There were no real police officers in Namimori. If you wanted something done, you simply put a discreet word in with one of the numerous offices connected to the Hibari name. The most popular threat that she hadn’t understood until then had been to tell someone else that you would call the realtor’s office on them.

It made a terrifying amount of sense.

Hibari Kyoya was allowed to do whatever he wanted, tempered by the  _ rules _ and  _ law _ as explained to him by a Kusakabe, because he  _ was the law. _

And Tomoe had proceeded to  _ challenge him to twice weekly spars _ .

She began to quietly smack her head against the comforting asphalt. Was this worth it? Was this  _ really _ worth it?

“HE EXTREMELY LIKES YOU, TOMOE-SAN.”

“...  _ What? _ ”

“HE CALLED YOU FOX.”

“Ryohei-san. What exactly does that have to do with him liking me or not after I hit him in the family jewels?”

“THAT MEANS HE EXTREMELY APPROVES.”

“... That is the most pointless explanation I have ever heard in my life.”

Apparently Hibari Kyoya really, really,  _ really _ didn’t like people in crowds. Crowding was for herbivores. Like sheep or chickens, but humans were especially annoying when they crowded together. Until proven otherwise, all human beings were herbivores. By fighting him twice and nailing him in the crotch each time before coming back for more, Shimizu Tomoe had elevated herself above the herd.

She wasn’t a carnivore. But she wasn’t just some annoying girl. Apparently in Hibari Kyoya’s mind, Shimizu Tomoe was a  _ conundrum _ that had teeth of her own.

Tomoe was honestly fine with that.

When she finally waved good-bye to Ryohei at her doorstep and blotted at her lip with her sleeve, kicked her shoes off and slipped across the floor, her uncle was there. To say that he wasn’t happy would be the understatement of the century. She strode into the kitchen with a purpose, placing the mop against the wall and pretending that it didn’t have a giant smear of blood across the sponge. Appearances were everything. “Good afternoon. I’m going for a run.”

“Tomoe-”

“Uncle. I am going to beat that boy into the ground if it is the last thing I do.” And she wasn’t lying. She was entirely determined to beat Hibari Kyoya, and it would be her absolute best interests to do so before the weird eyed boy showed up and wrecked her entire life.

Kaoru sighed. “This… is this about your father?”

Something in her wanted to scream, some remnant of the woman she once was and the boy she should have been howling and raging against his words. “No,” she bit out as her nails dug into her palms. “It isn’t. It’s… the knife edge.”

“Tomoe... I don’t understand.”

She laughed, a broken thing that said more about her desperation than she’d like it to. “I’m going to dance on the knife’s edge and  _ walk away _ from everything the world can throw at me.” There. She’d said it and wasn’t going to take it back. There was the naked truth, the entire crux of her desperation laid bare at her uncle’s feet.

His niece was nine, stood in his kitchen with blood on her face from a split lip and eyes blackened, and she had somehow found herself a reason for existing that wasn’t just her little sister. So what if it happened to be a goal to have the shit kicked out of her twice in a week by the town terror? He hadn’t seen this much life in her eyes since he pissed her off at her parent’s funeral nearly a year before. This was what she wanted to do. “I can’t exactly stop you, can I?”

“It’d be pointless.” Already she stood just a little bit taller, just a bit braver as she stared him in the eyes. Tomoe hadn’t exactly been a mouse when he brought her and her sister home, but this was an unexpected amount of dedication that she didn’t even have towards her schoolwork.

Kaoru ran his hand through his hair, ruffled it as he sighed. “All your homework has to be done. All of it. I expect your grades to be better than average. And if you want to stop… you can.”

He had never seen Tomoe actually smile. It was something like a work of art and something like her mother shining from beyond the grave. “Thank you.”

On the sixth day her body gave up and didn’t want to move.

On the seventh day she fought Hibari Kyoya in the parking lot of the school and grinned when she managed to dodge a blow to her face. In return, she didn’t hit him in the crotch for once. Flummoxed, Hibari misstepped and she took gleeful advantage to drive the sponge end of her mop into his sternum so hard he puked. They ended the fight when she slumped to the ground and waved a hand at him.

On the second week she managed to find an abandoned office building on the edge of town that she promptly claimed as her own. Tomoe swiftly broke in a new phase of her exercise regime and sprained her ankle mistiming a jump.

She fractured her collarbone on the twelfth spar when Hibari dodged her mop and slipped far too close to her body for anyone’s comfort. Kusakabe the Younger put a stop to that fight when she threw up all over the asphalt and it came out tinged with blood.

A month and a regime of painkillers and vitamins after she had broken her mop against Hibari’s shiny new metal tonfa, she congratulated him on his most felicitous victory and tried not to cry when he knocked the wind out of her. She used the halves of her mop to stab him in the feet and they counted that as a draw.

The week before Christmas, she mastered the art of backflipping from a railing to land on the ground without smashing her face open on the concrete.

Kusakabe Tetsuya knocked on their door on Christmas Eve and Uncle Kaoru nearly died on the spot when Tomoe quite cheerfully invited  _ Hibari Kyoya _ in to meet her family. Apparently they had agreed previously not to spar on holidays unless both of them were willing to sacrifice time with their family in order to accommodate their blood thirsty leanings. She’d earned herself a ‘wao’ for a successful execution of a backflip over Hibari’s tonfa the previous spar, so Tomoe was frankly on top of the world.

She handed him a wrapped package that was just a touch too professionally done for a child, and he had Testuya hand over the long and thin box they had brought with them.

For New Year’s she quite proudly smacked him in the shins hard enough that he had to  _ dodge _ and thanked him for the thoughtful gift of a new weapon. He punched her in the face. She kicked him in the balls. Hibari thanked her for the scarf.

That was her normal.

By the time she’d been at the regime for half a year, it barely phased her.

So she doubled it.

And then she started adding insane jumps and contortions to her free-running until she could reliably fold in half on the fly in order to avoid some of Hibari’s more vicious attacks.

When she graduated to the fourth grade and Hibari had graduated to the fifth, they celebrated by beating the shit out of each other on the rooftop. Tomoe spent an inordinate amount of time jumping out of his reach and spinning around him like a demented dance, and he countered by throwing his tonfa so hard that he broke her nose.

The first time she broke his arm was by accident on his eleventh birthday and she was so distracted by his sheer joy that she let him hit her in the face with his good arm. When he kneed her in the stomach so hard she passed out, he passed out right next to her.

Ryohei made it a point to attend every single spar, right up until the third month when his sister noticed what he was doing. Apparently Kyoko didn’t want her beloved big brother involved in the constant bloodbath that was Tomoe’s afterschool activities. And that was fine, really it was. Tomoe had told him so as she made him swear not to tell a soul about Fight Club or she’d use her Hibari training to beat the white out of his hair.

A year and a half into their strange sparring schedule, Hibari Kotori had started having weekly luncheons with Uncle Kaoru. By mutual unspoken agreement, neither Tomoe or Kyoya wanted to contemplate what could possibly be going on at those meetings. They’d much rather practice the fine art of beating the stuffing out of each other.

It was strangely friendly. Or at least as friendly as they could get.

Michiko had become strangely enamored with Hibari Kyoya, and Tomoe was swift to nip that in the bud.

“No. He’s a terrible human being.”

“But pretty.”

“ _ Trying to date Kyoya is pointless. _ ”

“He’s pretty though.”

“Michiko. Listen to your big sis. He doesn’t know what that word  _ means. _ ”

“Hmmm… does that mean you’re trying to date him Toto?”

“I will punt you off this roof, so help me God.”

She could run twenty kilometers in two hours at a leisurely pace and an hour if she truly pushed herself. If she bothered to use her ridiculous skills in free-running, she could reliably outrun Hibari Kyoya in less than fifteen minutes before he gave up. It was strange to think that she had spent more time in the last year and a half fighting, fleeing, or sassing Kyoya than she had with anyone else save her best friend and little sister.

It was even weirder to think about how when Tetsuya or Tetsuo couldn’t find Hibari they usually went to find Tomoe. She was reliably louder and much more visible.

Tomoe increased her daily regime twice a year, and she had started focusing more time on figuring out how to successfully run up a wall and jump off it without breaking her bones than she did on what the world was supposed to be like in five years. Hers was a strict daily routine that allowed zero room for deviation.

Wake up at four, perform her morning exercises. Take a quick shower. Have breakfast at seven forty-five, leave the house by eight. Walk with Ryohei, Kyoko, and Michiko to school. Attend school from eight fifty to two twenty-five.

On Mondays and Fridays, fight Hibari Kyoya in whatever obscure location they felt like that day.

Go home and do homework. Run from four until six, then spend two hours at the office building free-running all over the junk that had been left behind by whatever kind of company CEDEF was. One day she would figure out what kind of company required the addition of a fire pole in the middle of their back rooms, but until then she was content to use it for practice.

She broke her wooden naginata on a wall, and both Tomoe and Kyoya had stopped to stare at the impact dent she had left in the concrete. That was her second wao on her eleventh birthday, right after she had used Kyoya’s shoulder as a springboard and launched herself so far over him she had set up a dust cloud upon landing.

Six times out of ten he couldn’t hit her, and two out of seven she could land a hit on him. It was frustrating how she wasn’t at his level, but she clung to every ‘wao’ and ‘Fox’ he said like a drowning woman needed air. Impressing Hibari Kyoya was an accomplishment, and if she could impress him enough then she stood a better chance against the end of the world.

Some part of her biologically eleven year old brain said that a tiny baby named Bermuda was the end game, and that little brat could break the sound barrier.

Tomoe needed to be  _ faster _ and strong enough to survive it. If she wanted to walk away from the potential end of the world, she needed to become a whirlwind. She bought her own naginata this time, less a naginata and more of terribly hefty oak monstrosity. The shop on the internet advertised it as a wooden odachi, and she had gleefully ripped off the twine and stripped off all the decorations that made it a practice sword.

She went through just as many wooden weapons as Hibari lost tonfa to throwing them at her before they reached an accord.

He would buy her wooden spears en masse and she would catch and return the tonfa he threw instead of just letting them sail off into the distance. Tetsuya confided in her later that he had never seen Kyoya that happy before in his life when she interpreted ‘catch and return’ to mean ‘kick it back at his head’.

It was almost heartbreaking when Hibari graduated to middle school and left his weird sparring partner behind.

Or it would have been if he hadn’t shown up at her school in his brand new uniform with an impressive set of collapsible tonfa in his hands and as nonchalant of a smirk as he had ever made. The school administration fainted and a few students cried, and it was so very noisy that Tomoe strolled off the school grounds with the full confidence that he would follow her.

She had him well trained in the concept of ‘lady’s choice’. If she said she didn’t want to fight on school grounds, then they wouldn’t fight on school grounds.

The old CEDEF office would do just fine.

They tore it to pieces over the course of the school year. For once Tomoe had the advantage, years spent memorizing new and interesting ways to cross a room left her a blur of motion that he could barely keep up with. In a fair one on one fight, Hibari would always win. But in the well traversed and worn office building, Tomoe was queen of the castle.

Nowhere was safe. She would give him a ten minute head start to find himself a spot, and then she would hunt him down. Over desks and around stairwells, she pounded the concept of fighting on the move into his head. Staying still meant she’d go back to death from above, and he hadn’t figured out how to deal with that particular trick.

A month into the new school year he showed up to the office with a bright red and gold armband affixed to his jacket and what passed for a grin on his face. Something in her broke, probably whatever sanity she had left, and Tomoe laughed manically. “Congratulations on your victory, Hibari-san.”

“Hn,” he nodded even as he pulled his tonfa from his sleeves. “Fight me, Fox.”

Tomoe stood on the back of a chair, perfectly balanced as she pointed her so called whooping stick at him. “Tout le plaisir était pour moi. Shall we begin then?”

After almost two years of dedicated sparring together, of twice weekly beatings and an intense training regime, Tomoe and Kyoya had reached a point where they didn’t so much fight as they danced brutally with each other. A single misstep would be rewarded with blood and pain. Theirs were fights that didn’t care about collateral damage or innocent bystanders.

Kill or be killed.

Eat or be eaten.

Ryohei had started calling their carnage a twice weekly festival in order to convincingly lie to his sister about just what his best friend was up to. Tomoe had to cede the point that it was a party of its own kind. A celebration of strength and speed, of desperation and agony. Neither one wanted to let the other hold the upper ground, but they were both entirely too comfortable with setting each other up for whatever interesting new trick the other had picked up over the past week.

There were several flashy (yet somehow effective) maneuvers that Tomoe had practiced in the wrecked office that she tempered under the wrath of the Hibari heir. She loved them with all of her being. From her absolute favorite of jumping over his head to smack him in the back to the time she somersaulted away and spun out to kick him in the ankles, she loved them all.

If Hibari had power, Tomoe had the speed to make it a real workout.

All the strength in the world didn’t matter if he couldn’t land a single hit. At the same time, all the speed in the universe meant nothing if she punched like a piece of paper. Tomoe annoyed him into moving faster, and Kyoya aggravated her into hitting just a little bit harder. It was a push and pull, a delicate balance maintained by sheer virtue of neither of them attempting a real conversation.

Talking was for before the fight, to clarify intent, and after the fight. After was to confirm their intentions to do it again, or if not possible,  _ when _ suited them both.

She flattened herself against the floor and rolled to avoid the broken remnants of a chair that Hibari had kicked at her head, pushed herself off the ground with one desperate struggle to spring away from the blow he meant for her head. There had been carpet and good flooring once, before they had started using it as their personal playground.

The CEDEF office had been a nice postmodern building with wood panelling and plush carpets, heavy wood furniture and pretty decorations. Once there had been a really nice painting of a ballerina in this particular room, right behind a wood desk that had since been smashed to splinters and kindling. The stairs had been clean and the metal railings unwarped.

Now the building looked like it had been abandoned in the wake of a natural disaster. The windows were smashed, the furniture destroyed, walls full of holes, flooring mangled beyond all repair, and still they fought. Tomoe didn’t know what kind of bankruptcy the company had gone through, but she almost felt bad for whoever bought the ruin for renovations.

Almost. If she hadn’t known that no one had used this building in the entire time she had lived in Namimori, she would have actually felt bad about it.

“Fox.”

Tomoe panted as she slipped the ends of her stick in the sockets of what had once been a perfectly functional fluorescent light fixture, jammed her toes in the gap and glared down at him like a bat. “Hibari-san?”

The boy scowled up at her, brushing the ends of her pigtails out of the way when the wind from outside blew them into his face. “She wants to meet you.”

Thoroughly nonplussed and enjoying the brief respite in the flow of battle, Tomoe shifted her feet to a more secure position before she tilted her head enough to keep her hair out of his face. “Who does?”

“My mother.”

Well.  _ Shit. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh heeeey I forgot I could do these.  
> So yes, that happened. I regret nothing. Feel free to leave comments on things you liked, didn't like, could be done better, et cetera et cetera. I will, honest to god, answer every single one.  
> Also I can be found over on tumblr as lacelich if you want to stalk me quietly or what have you.  
> Look, I have no words for how amazed I am that this has even gotten this much attention. No words can express my joy adequately, none.


	4. Koi no Yokan - A Love That Could Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hisamaru needs to dress better.  
> -Or-  
> Michiko is the only sane one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is late by what... almost two days? The backlog is dead by my own stupidity, work is the devil, and this chapter was a pain in my posterior. But hey! It's here now. Have some suffering.
> 
> Let the headcanons commence!

Shimizu Hisamaru was having the worst crisis of their second life.

They had nothing to wear.

Normally this was the sort of crisis one had after puberty had set in and the concept of the opposite gender became too much to bear. Instead, Hisamaru faced the dubious honor of an invitation they couldn’t refuse. Dinner (which the concept was  in and of itself not a problem they had ever had) with adults.

To be more specific: the Hibari.

Hibari Kotori to be exact.

Otherwise known as the one and only living adult who had the power to actually drop Hisamaru in a dark hole and forget about them and  _ legally _ get away with it.

Uncle Kaoru certainly had the legal right to their education and general well being, but there was only one person who could charge them with a completely made up crime and have it stick. For all Hisamaru knew, Hibari Kotori was one of those overbearing mothers who wanted nothing but the best for their darling little boy and woe betide anyone who disagreed. It didn’t help that Uncle Kaoru thought their pain was the greatest thing he had seen all year and he cackled about it from the living room.

Michiko stared at her older sibling, all of her not unsubstantial five year old childish wisdom warning her that saying anything would end in tragedy. She drummed her feet and tried to make sense of what her sibling was doing. “Toto? Why are you doing?”

“I. Have nothing to wear. I’m going to die.” Michiko didn’t get to see her Toto panic very often, and it was a treat while it lasted. Naked save for a pair of boxers and a faded old camisole, Hisamaru glared at their closet like their use would cause it to spontaneously produce an outfit that met their currently insane criteria.

Michiko snorted, her eyebrows climbing into her hairline. “Is it important?”

“Michiko, light of my life, I bequeath all of my worldly possessions to you.”

“So it’s important.”

Hisamaru stopped in the middle of trying to pull all their hair out, fingers tangled in the waist long mess. “ _ His mother is going to kill me. _ So  _ yes, _ it’s important.”

Her Toto was so over dramatic it was sad. “Wear the blue one then. The dress with all the sparkles that looks like stars.”

They blinked and glared at their little sister. “I don't think showing up to dinner with the Hibaris in a dress is the wisest of choices here.”

So. Over. Dramatic. “Why not?”

“In case it’s escaped your notice in the last twenty four hours,  _ I have a penis Michiko. _ ”

“So?,” she inquired flatly.

Hisamaru made a vague arm gesture that indicated their entire person. “It’s not the done thing at formal events.”

“But is it formal? Is it  _ really? _ ”

They stopped in the middle of reaching to strangle her. “... I don't actually know.”

Sometimes their Toto was an idiot. “So wear a kimono. You said Kyoya was really into traditional stuff.”

“... All the ones I have are for girls.”

As Hisamaru liked to say, this argument was pointless. “Wear uncle’s dark one with the clouds then. It looks manly-”

Her normally composed Toto sprang upon her like lightning, squished her cheeks between their fingers and snarled. “I  _ refuse _ . Michiko,  _ I will burn that kimono before I wear it anywhere near Hibari Kyoya. _ ” They punctuated their ire with periodic squeezing, shook Michiko until she nodded around the pressure. Agree to disagree, that was the family motto.

Her face was red when Hisamaru finally let go, jaw aching from blubbering like a fish. Michiko rubbed at her face as her red eyes narrowed at her Toto. “Jerk.”

“You love me anyway. Now help. Me. Find. Something.”

“Winter kimono?”

The noise Hisamaru made would have been better suited from a tea kettle. “Rental.”

“Mother’s kimono?”

It was a nice kimono. Dyed dark blue that faded into a calming cerulean, their mother’s old kimono had a delicate butterfly motif that was neutral enough for anything she had needed. “... why are you so fixated on kimonos?”

Very carefully, slow as molasses, Michiko scooted to the opposite side of the bed. “No reason.”

“ _ Michiko. _ ”

The siblings were so close they had no secrets. It was a rule. No secrets between them, no lies. “I made a deal with Tetsuya-kun,” she mumbled as she rubbed at her face. If Michiko could get her Toto in a kimono, maybe some part of Kyoya’s hind brain would kick in. Tetsuya and Michiko despaired over the failure of progress in this relationship, and this dinner could possibly jump start it into more than just 'two people who beat each other up frequently’.

Hisamaru sighed. “Fine. Mother’s kimono it is. Just this once.”

She jumped on the bed, squealing with joy. “Yes! Oh, you're going to be so pretty!  _ So pretty! _ ” Her Toto was  _ always  _ pretty, but Kyoya just couldn't see it. Tetsuya even thought they were pretty, though she swore not to tell a soul of that fact. If they could just convince Kyoya’s mother of that basic fact of the universe, maybe they could win over Kotori to their side. And if they could win her over, Michiko could get a fantastic brother-in-law. She’d already told Tetsuya that she was going to marry him when she grew up. This way they’d all be one big, happy, violent family.

The calculating frown on Hisamaru’s face was enough of a warning that Michiko should quit while she was behind. “Toto?”

“Hm?”

“Can… May I watch?”

Hismaru slid off the bed and grinned. “Of course you can,” they said as they walked over to their dresser. Buried in the second drawer, underneath all of the bras and myriad underwear, was the secret to Hisamaru’s success. It was a mystical ritual that her Toto went through every day, or had since the day Ryohei grabbed Toto’s hand and proclaimed that Kyoko had needed a bra, a magical process of silicone wonder and medical adhesive.

Neither of the siblings understood exactly how Hisamaru had gotten away with purchasing fake breasts at the age of twelve. It was like Uncle Kaoru had a magical ability to completely blank out when faced with a bill from any kind of lingerie store (online or otherwise) and pretend that it wasn’t happening.

In reality, Shimizu Kaoru simply refused to be the one to tell Tomoe that extreme amounts of exercise had probably killed off her ability to have substantial breasts. If buying fake ones made her happy and made her feel more like a girl when she was getting knocked around by a boy, far be it for him to stop her. This was, as he so liked to mutter under his breath, exactly the sort of reason that made him drink.

Off came Hisamaru’s camisole and out came the mystical box with its precious contents. Hisamaru arched a slender brow at Michiko and grinned over their shoulder. “You remember the rules?”

This too was part of the ritual. “Yes. Breasts and twin tails means I call you Tomoe. No breasts and ponytail means I call you Hisamaru. Hair down is for home and I call you Toto,” she rattled off the litany with barely a breath.

Hisamaru slipped their bra around their middle and carefully pulled it into place. “Gender?”

“Sister when Tomoe, neither when Hisamaru, and ask first if we’re home.”

“Attagirl.” It wasn’t Hisamaru who smiled like that, all sharp edges hidden behind the edges of their lips. Hisamaru smiled like a shark, all their teeth out like they wanted to rip out the throat of every person who so much as looked at them twice. But her Toto always smiled so  _ prettily _ when they were Tomoe. Michiko had tried to explain it to Tetsuya once, when he came to pick her up from school because Toto and Kyoya were going at it like the natural disaster they were. But she never had the right words.

Tomoe smiled like she was shy, like everything about the world was new and  _ amazing _ and like there was a secret she wasn’t going to tell Michiko until she was older.

Tetsuya and Ryohei didn’t understand. Boys were stupid like that.

Silence filled the room as the rest of the ritual continued on with practiced grace. Michiko put her face in a pillow and hummed to herself until Tomoe snapped her fingers. And it was a magic show, one moment there was her gangly Toto in gross clothes and when she pulled the pillow down there was Tomoe with her delicate limbs and everything hidden behind her hair like messages written in fog on windows. The moment never lasted long, not when it was time for the most important part.

Michiko always tried to breathe a little bit quieter, scared that even a single sound could ruin the spell. Tomoe would sit at their mother’s old vanity, because of course Hisamaru had kept  _ everything _ that was their mother’s, and pass deft fingers filled with brushes and tiny little sponges over her face with practiced grace. A touch of color to the corners of her eyes, a stroke of a wand to make her lashes just a little bit bigger, a hint of pink that gave her mouth a slight pout. “War paint, complete,” Tomoe whispered.

This was the best part, when her Toto sat at the mirror with their hair down and Tomoe’s face on. It was Michiko’s job to fetch Uncle Kaoru while Tomoe put on the inner layer of her clothes for the day. But this was serious, and Tomoe raised a hand to stop Michiko before she could run off. “Toto?”

“Make sure he’s sober before he comes to help,” Tomoe ordered before waving Michiko off.

Kaoru was  _ not _ sober. Instead he was a curious state of somewhere between smashed and just barely maintaining equilibrium. This was not conducive to Tomoe’s sanity. So Michiko did what any good Shimizu hellspawn (Kaoru’s words, never theirs) did: she dumped a glass of cold water from the fridge on his head as he sprawled across the arm of their much abused couch. He lurched to his feet with a curse Michiko was not to repeat.

Tetsuya had been very clear about the behavior Tomoe and Kyoya engaged in and what words should  _ never _ be used by any good young lady. He had even helpfully placed her on an empty window frame, long since cleared of glass and debris, and kept a running commentary on terrible things Tomoe said when in the heat of the moment.

Michiko’s favorite phrase would forever be ‘you thrice begotten son of a drunken monkey and a barrel of industrial lubricant’.

Uncle Kaoru couldn’t hold a candle to Tomoe at her worst. She waited for him to wring the water out of his hair and glared when he wordlessly prayed to whoever was listening to save him. This was  _ important _ to her Toto.  _ Nothing _ was ever important to Toto.  _ Nothing. _

“The hell- Michiko, really? You’re supposed to be the cute one,” he remarked. “You’re the breath of fresh air in this house.”

“Toto  _ has a thing. _ ”

Kaoru ran a hand through his hair as if it would somehow magically become less wet if he shook it around like a dog. “... Okay? Not seeing how this is my problem-”

She cut him off with desperate hands slammed down on the table. “Toto has an  _ important _ thing. You can’t laugh.”

“... Oh please tell me she’s losing her mind over how to make the best first impression.  _ Please. _ Lie to me Michiko, lie to me.” He sprawled back over the furniture and carded his fingers behind his head. Clearly he was not taking this as seriously as he should have been.

Michiko shook her head so hard her cute little bow (and she knew it was cute because Tetsuya said it was and thus it was her favorite  _ forever _ ) almost fell out of her hair. “Nooooo,” she whined. “You’re not listening.  _ Toto thinks this is important _ .”

Kaoru spared one bloodshot red eye to stare at his youngest niece. “... Not pointless?”

“ _ No _ .”

He bolted upright so fast he winced before he grabbed Michiko’s shoulders and dripped on their carpet. “Holy. Shit.” Kaoru pulled her closer and pressed his forehead against Michiko’s. “It’s not the clothes then. She thinks meeting Hibari Kotori is  _ important? _ Those exact words?”

Ew. She wrinkled her nose at the reek of cognac on his breath. “No. But she said she’d  _ burn a kimono _ before she wore it near Kyoya.”

“Holy shit,” he murmured as if he had heard the greatest scandal in his life. “She actually-”

“Cares about what she’s wearing around Kyoya.”

“Michiko. You know what this means.”

“Toto has an interest in  _ a boy _ and is nervous about  _ meeting his mother _ ?”

“Yes.” Kaoru blinked. “Oh my god I’m too young to give her away at a wedding.” As if Toto would  _ let _ him. But she grabbed at his hands and they stared at each other as if the thought had finally percolated through their brains.

Toto. Married. Toto in a white dress, all lace and a train a mile long, walking up the aisle to… Hibari Kyoya. Who would probably bite every attendee to death. No, it would be safer to plan for a beach wedding. Or maybe marry them under the cherry blossoms. That’d be pretty, and oh what a picture it would make. And then Michiko could have a summer wedding at the Namimori shrine and Tetsuya would wear a real suit and he’d think she was just as pretty as Toto-

“-ichiko. Michiko. Earth to Michiko. Hello hello.” Kaoru poked her in the forehead and rubbed that particular spot between her eyes before he lined up his other hand to flick her in the forehead.

Quick as lightning she sprang back and clapped her hands to her forehead. “No! No! I’m paying attention!”

Kaoru laughed. “Uh-huh. So, daydream something awesome?”

“I wasn’t daydreaming! I was just… thinking really hard.” Michiko did her best to scowl at her uncle for being ridiculous. Unfortunately, Michiko had about the same amount of terror inducing skills as a wet kitten, which was to say none at all. Really, it was so much easier to scare Uncle Kaoru when Toto was right behind her with their special stare that promised ‘unceasing agony in the depths of Hell’. Not that she was supposed to know what that was.

“Miiiiichikooooo,” he sang.

“I’m here, I’m here. Toto wants you.”

Kaoru sighed into the palm of his hand. “Let me guess. She can’t figure out how to make her hair look pretty enough for Kyoya and Kotori.” Because of  _ course _ Toto couldn’t do their own hair. If this was as important as Toto thought it was, then it merited the hands of someone more practiced at fashion than Toto. Even though it irked Toto something fierce, there was no denying that Uncle Kaoru had impeccable taste in hair and clothes.

“Yup,” she nodded. “She’s got all the parts waiting.”

“Michiko? Do me a favor and  _ never _ become as much of a diva as your sister is.” Of course she wouldn’t. Tetsuya didn’t like divas. He said they were high maintenance and needed way too many ridiculous things and he got enough of that with Kyoya. Tetsuya wanted a nice girl who could take care of herself but that he could spoil with the little things. Michiko was going to be that girl.

“Yes, Uncle Kaoru.”

He got to his feet with a wince and an almost perfunct cracking of his fingers. “Let’s go get this princess ready for her ball, shall we?” Kaoru bowed like some weird fairy tale prince and Michiko laughed. “We really shouldn’t keep her waiting. You know how she gets.”

Michiko smiled up at him playfully, curtseying as she took his hand. “She’s nervous, Uncle. It’s weird.”

“She’s twelve and has been hanging out with this boy since she was nine. Of course she’s nervous. She’s meeting his mother.”

“Is Kyoya’s mom nice?”

Kaoru stopped her at the foot of the stairs, his eyes wide as he made a show of looking for said woman. “Careful. They say she can hear disrespect miles away.” The ruffling of Michiko’s hair was all she needed to know he was playing with her. “Nah. Kotori’s super sweet. Once you get past all that… prickly violence. We’re never telling Tomoe that.”

Michiko giggled. “You’ve been showing her photos of Toto, huh?”

“Oh, absolutely. She thinks you two are  _ adorable _ and she could just  _ eat you up _ . Wanna come to tea with her later? Betcha she’ll make Tetsuya come so you’ve got a friend. Plus, Hibari Sanosuke is a baker. You know, her husband.”

“ _ Yes please. _ ”

Toto stood in the middle of their room with their hair down and a frightening death glare aimed at the door of their closet where they had hung the kimono in question. Their pale fingers clutched at a fancy wooden box with desperate terror, tapping away as if it would help with their nerves. For a long moment they didn’t even notice that the two had entered their territory. Kaoru and Michiko exchanged a long suffering glance.

Maybe they should have gotten Ryohei to keep Toto company in the hours before dinner. Or at least had a spar in their tiny backyard so they could wear each other out. Maybe Toto should have doubled their morning regime. Either way, Michiko felt slightly bad for them. And then she remembered what was at stake. If this didn’t work, Toto would  _ never _ marry Kyoya, because Kyoya would  _ never _ think of Toto like a person.

It was going to take dedicated effort on all sides to get Kyoya to get his head out of the sand.

Michiko didn’t even want to think of what Tetsuya meant when he said that Toto was ‘the kind of person who needed to be chased and won the old fashioned way’. But whatever it meant, Kyoya had to be willing to chase instead of just… bite them to death on the spot.

She’d agreed to get Toto to be appealing to Kyoya’s so-called ‘carnivore impulses’. Apparently Tetsuya believed, and Ryohei had actually agreed after much consultation with Kyoko, that Toto was probably the only human being alive who could match Kyoya’s urges. Granted, Ryohei had said that if Tetsuya ever had such urges anywhere near Michiko he would politely remind him of the ‘bonds of siblings’. Kyoko said she’d suspend the rule for it. So whatever those urges were, clearly it was a good thing that Toto could possibly inspire them in Kyoya.

Michiko sat cross legged on the bed behind the vanity, leaned forward just enough to catch the angle of her uncle’s hands. Uncle Kaoru didn’t speak as his hands buried themselves into the long pink locks atop Toto’s head. He sectioned it off and clipped it, gently combed and brushed as Michiko quietly pointed out ribbons and decorations. They never said a word. Toto couldn’t stand conversations behind them or about them when they had to ask Kaoru to do their hair.

Toto hadn’t needed Kaoru to do their hair since they were ten and deemed his hands worthy of assisting with Michiko’s hair. Not that Michiko really needed all that much help, as she prefered to keep her hair in a little bob Toto said was cute. But Toto was entirely capable of doing their own hair, leaving moments like this for fancy occasions that gave Toto hives. They couldn’t bear the cost of seeing a hairdresser, so they had browbeat Uncle Kaoru into learning how to do their hair for them.

Tomoe liked the traditional, the irony of a half-Irish girl knowing more about the culture of the Japan of old than full-blooded modern girls tickled her far too much. Her closet reflected it entirely too well. She bought her clothes from the supermarket, cheap and ugly things that fit her poorly but left her with money to spare. Tomoe kept all of their mother’s kimonos, all their father’s, and boxed them up to use later. The kimono Michiko wears are all the fruits of Tomoe’s hoarding labors, stitches ripped out of hand-me-downs from elderly ladies far too happy to pass on the old to the new generation.

Tomoe had a few kimono like that. Michiko always wondered how it was that the elderly women of Namimori just so happened to want to give her their old clothes.

Watching Toto become Tomoe was always amazing, but watching Tomoe become a princess was even better. If this didn't work then nothing would. When Uncle Kaoru finally finished slipping in the last kanzashi he grinned into the mirror. “And there’s Tomoe-hime. Pretty as a picture. Damn, I do good work.”

“Degenerate.  _ Language,” _ Tomoe hissed as she tapped her fingers against the vanity's white painted top.

Michiko flailed her arms frantically as Uncle Kaoru prepared to flee. “It’s okay! I know better!” They never kept their mop in their room, but there were enough pointy hair decorations and throwable things on the vanity to make Uncle Kaoru’s life miserable. It would be a shame if Uncle Kaoru was knocked unconscious before he could help Tomoe put her kimono on. The decorations in Tomoe’s hair jingled as she whipped her head around to glare at Michiko before her face went white as a sheet behind her makeup.

Tomoe’s fingers scrabbled at the mirror’s surface and she screamed without words in her rage. Nails tapped against glass as she roared, and Kaoru took a drunken step backwards out of concern. Common sense in the Shimizu household said that only a dead man walked _ towards _ Tomoe when the whites of her eyes went bloodshot and her pupils went curiously shiny. She never seemed to remember anything she had done when she was that angry, and Kaoru didn’t feel like testing her charity. “What. Did. You.  _ Do? _ ” Ice cold and clipped, the words themselves were a threat.

The fact that Tomoe was offended that Uncle Kaoru had done something wrong with her hair, the same hair she had placed in his care on countless occasions and never lost herself over, was enough of a clue for Michiko. There wasn’t anything different from her usual formal style. Same bun, same trails of hair brushing past her collarbone. It was the same complex mess that would have made those actors in that samurai from Edo show Hisamaru watched, not even the slightest bit sneakily, green with envy. Her hair was pretty and Michiko couldn’t see a single flaw. So she clung to Tomoe’s waist, face buried into Tomoe’s nagajuban to keep her Toto’s manicured nails from ripping out Uncle Kaoru’s hair.

Uncle Kaoru, not being an actual idiot, proceeded to hold his hands up by his face and backed up to the door. “I did it exactly the same! Kyoya will think it’s pretty.  _ You’re _ pretty. You’re the prettiest  _ goddamn _ princess. Calm the hell down.”

It was kind of cute how Tomoe sulked while Uncle Kaoru folded her carefully into their mother’s old kimono. When it came time for the obi itself, a thick gold and red brocade that had come from the depths of their next door neighbor’s storage room, Michiko received the dubious honor of being kicked out of the room to answer the door.

She wasn’t afraid to open the door for strangers, not in Namimori. Anywhere else and she would have looked through the peephole first. But in Namimori they had the Hibari.

Crime rates in Namimori were some of the lowest in the nation. Then again, the citizens of Namimori had the Realtor’s Foundation and the strongly affiliated Homeowner’s Association to keep their peace. Tetsuya had very carefully applied the signs underneath their nameplate himself. Technically, the Shimizu were members of both organizations according to some weird backroom dealing that Tetsuo, Kotori, and Kaoru had engaged in. Realistically they only had the standard signs with an additional gilt edging, but Michiko had memorized the phone numbers to both in the event of an emergency.

“Good evening!” she chirped.

“GOOD EVENING TO THE EXTREME!”

“Good evening, Michiko-chan. Have we missed it yet?” Ryohei and Kyoko swapped their shoes with practiced motions at the entrance before they nearly ran to the the living room. Kyoko took up her usual spot on the couch and clapped delightedly as Michiko bolted for the kitchen to grab the tray of snacks Uncle Kaoru had made in advance of this moment.

As they all sprawled themselves in carefully deliberate positions around the living room furniture, with Michiko neatly avoiding sitting in the wet spot on the couch, Michiko suddenly bolted to her feet. “We have to careful!”

Kyoko giggled behind her hand. “Tomoe-senpai is worried, isn’t she?”

“ _ Yes _ . Toto almost killed Uncle because Toto thought Uncle did Toto’s hair wrong.”

Kyoko turned pale and her eyes darted over to Ryohei. “She… she’s really not doing well, is she?”

“Perceptive. Ultimately pointless, but perceptive.”

Tomoe’s tabi and the sleeves of her kimono made whispering sounds as she descended down the stairs. She blinked down at the three of them with a careful amount of practiced disdain. “Well? Opinions?”

Whatever opinions they all had for the sight of Tomoe in a kimono were cut off at the source as the doorbell rang for the second time in the last ten minutes. Uncle Kaoru bolted down the stairs and nearly collided with Tomoe in his haste to reach the door. He threw it open with all of his weight before grabbing the shoulders of one Kusakabe Tetsuo with frantic desperation. “She’s  _ your _ problem now.”

Tetsuo, to his everlasting credit, merely accepted the zori in Kaoru’s hand and ducked out from under his grip. He made various placating gestures to the other man, clearly unable to handle the sheer amount of distress emanating from a fully grown man that Tetsuo may or may not have had conjugal relations with. “Understood.”

Michiko shared a long look with her Toto. If those two really thought they had hidden the truth from them after nearly four years of clandestine meetings and embarrassed looks, then the Shimizu siblings wouldn’t be the ones to break their proverbial bubbles. Tomoe really did look pretty, all dolled up like they were older and much more dignified than the geeky penny pincher they really were. It was nice to see her Toto dressed like they had standards in their wardrobe for once.

Somewhere along the line she found herself wrapped up in her Toto’s sleeves as they quietly pressed their forehead to hers. “I’m off.”

“Have a safe trip!”

Kyoko snapped a photo with the camera no one ever wanted to acknowledge that Tomoe had ever given her last Christmas. She was an absolute menace with it in her hands, taking candid photos of as many moments as she could to ‘immortalize them for history’.

Her brother accepted it as just a phase of grief thanks to Tomoe’s long explanations. Their parents were  _ gone _ and everyone dealt with things like that differently. So what if Kyoko expressed her grief by taking photos of everything she thought was an important memory and sticking them in carefully collated albums. Tomoe had been quick to point out, with a wave to her growing collection of blood-spattered mops and wooden sticks, that this was not the worst way to deal with an absence in the family.

The Shimizu and the Sasagawa were basically each other’s families anyway. At least, they were in the eyes of the Realtor’s Foundation. They just happened to live catty-corner to each other, but Shimizu Kaoru was responsible for both sets of residential paperwork. It was fine. They were dealing. It had been a few years, but they were all getting along together.

So what if Tomoe slipped into English about how ‘everyone was just conveniently an orphan’ or ‘parental abandonment leads to promotion to parent’. Michiko was completely fine with the fact that she could count on Kyoko, Ryohei, and Toto to take care of her when Uncle Kaoru was at work. Uncle Kaoru actually  _ liked _ being the designated guardian to four children he didn’t have to potty-train or really do much maintenance on. 

They were are ridiculously self-sufficient, save for moments like this where they just  _ weren’t _ .

Tomoe high-fived Ryohei with her usual silk-covered-steel smile, the one that Michiko and Tetsuya had discovered she had taught to Kyoya as his murder face, palms slapped together with an audible thwack. “HAVE EXTREMELY GOOD LUCK!”

“Pointless. Let the battle begin.” They have a ritual handshake, a secret squirrel code sequence that is always done before anything important. Graduations, exams, field trips, all things children their age thought were life crises. More often than not, the complex hand movements were performed like a good luck charm before Tomoe’s twice-weekly bouts with Kyoya. They do it in the doorway, hands slapping together in a rhythm that is more challenge than it is a handshake, ending with their usual exuberant (Tomoe let Ryohei take up her slack) war cry.

And of course Kyoko snapped another picture, finger quick to shake the Polaroid so Michiko could see. Tomoe said that those photos were how Kyoko dealt, collections of memories her parents weren’t there to experience. Uncle Kaoru just said she was imposing her will on reality. All Michiko knew was that the more photos she took, the prettier the results.

Kusakabe Tetsuo bundled Tomoe off into the car, technically the Hibari family’s that he was to transport important guests with, and bowed before he slid in. The car was ostentatious, levels beyond the sleek red abomination Uncle Kaoru had purchased so many years ago. Black and dangerous looking, its tinted windows and thick doors unnerved Michiko. She hated the thing with as much disdain as Tomoe hated Uncle Kaoru’s car. But it was  _ safe _ and despite the Shimizu siblings opinion that walking under your own power was the best method, it was still faster than Tomoe could manage in a kimono.

Not as fast as Tomoe could get when she was  _ determined _ and grouchy, but still fast. Michiko would never understand why her Toto didn't want to run for any kind of track team, or why they didn't want to join any clubs. Apparently Toto’s goal was to be even faster and Michiko believed they could with all her heart.

She waved as the car drove off, followed it to the end of the street and broke down in tears when she couldn't see it anymore.

This was their one chance to impress Hibari Kotori and win her over to their side. Michiko prayed that Toto didn't use this opportunity to do something unfortunate.

Like destroy the landscaping by fighting Kyoya. Or fight Kyoya period. If Toto would just keep their knee-jerk reactions of sass and violence to a minimum, Michiko would consider this a rampant success. Toto could be charming when they really felt like it, if you considered their brand of deadpan remarks as charming. Hopefully the fear of Kyoya's mother made Tomoe default to using the manners she insisted Michiko have at all times.

A hand settled in the top of her head, ruffled her hair even as a little cloud of smoke settled around her. “She’ll be fine,” rumbled Uncle Kaoru from behind her. “Tomoe’s a tough little brat.”

Michiko sniffled as she wiped her face on her sleeve. Toto wasn’t there to tell her it was disgusting, and Uncle Kaoru didn't really care how gross she was. Her voice wobbled with her tears, hiccups mingling in with her sobs. Uncle Kaoru simply scooped her up into his arms and rubbed circles absently at her back. “There, there. It’s all right. No need for tears, Little Beauty.”

He tried to soothe her even as he carried her back inside. Some distant part of her registered the click and whir of a camera even as she did her level best to burrow into Uncle Kaoru’s hold. He was warm and smelled almost pleasant; the tobacco and alcohol mixed with his cologne made a unique aroma she would forever find calming. Uncle Kaoru was the closest thing she had ever had to a father, even as Toto was her mother, brother, and sister all at once.

“Oof, you're getting big. You won't be my Little Beauty for much longer.” He resettled her on his hip so he had an arm free to direct Ryohei’s always over exuberant energy of Uncle Kaoru’s way.

Michiko shook her head frantically. “Nuh-uh. I’ll always be your Little Beauty.”

Uncle Kaoru chuckled and rubbed his stubble against her cheek until she laughed. “And there's her pretty smile! Now, my Little Beauty. What do you say to having dinner out tonight, hm? My treat, Sasagawas. No arguments. And don’t be modest either, Little Miss Kyoko. Let me spoil my pretty girls for an evening.”

“Ah, but Mister Shimizu-” Uncle Kaoru cut off Kyoko’s protest with a wave of his hand.

“That's Uncle Kaoru to you, Little Miss Kyoko. You're family. How many times am I going to have to remind you?”

Kyoko smiled. “At least a few more times… Uncle Kaoru.”

Michiko could feel his grin against her cheek. “There we go.” He put her down and ruffled at Michiko’s hair before he smoothed it back down. “Go get beautiful, Little Beauty. We’ll swing by that sushi place Tomoe avoids like it has the plague. Let’s go figure out her secret, hm?”

She raced to her room, dimly hearing the sounds of Uncle Kaoru instructing Kyoko to go through Toto’s closet for something pretty to wear. (Michiko wished Kyoko all the luck in the universe; Toto buried all of their nice sundresses in the far back of their closet and pretended they didn’t even exist.) Ryohei was apparently to go with Uncle Kaoru to be ‘dressed in a style to which Ryohei had better become accustomed if he ever wanted to get a girlfriend or boyfriend in his life’.

Kyoko knocked gently on the frame of Michiko’s door. The difference between the two sibling’s rooms was as vast as the sea was deep. Where Tomoe’s room was a shrine to their dead mother and eras long gone, Michiko had cheerfully taken Uncle Kaoru up on his offer to have her room papered in a pretty pink lace and all of her furniture replaced with thing suitable for a princess. There were more scraps of lace and stuffed animals crammed into her decor than any human being ever should have in one space. She just couldn’t get Uncle Kaoru to  _ stop _ buying her all of those unnecessary things. Every time she tried to tell him no, he began crying and then Toto got upset and tried to beat sense into him with the hard end of her mop. “Michiko-chan? Would you like some help?”

“Kyoko-chan! Yes please!” Michiko smiled up at Kyoko and giggled as the other girl practically glided in on a wave of happiness.

Kyoko clapped her hands. “Oh good! Tomoe-senpai never lets me play dress-up with her.” She tapped her lip absently as she contemplated the contents of Michiko’s closet. “ I wonder why?”

Michiko blanched whiter than a sheet of paper. “Er… no… no reason? Toto doesn’t… Toto doesn’t like it when people can see the spell!”

“Oh? So Tomoe-senpai’s a magician? That’s amazing!” Michiko was not going to be the one to ruin Kyoko’s happiness. Besides, Toto really  _ was _ a magician… of a sort anyway. “I always wanted to be a magician. I wonder if I could get Tomoe-senpai to teach me.”

Not. Definitely not. Toto wouldn’t even teach Michiko the real spell. “May-maybe? Toto will probably say it’s pointless.”

“Ah… that’s true.” Kyoko held up a pretty sundress, one that matched the one she had  _ somehow _ been able to find in the back corner of Toto’s wardrobe. “What do you think, Michiko-chan?”

“Yay! I get to match with Kyoko-nee!” She even allowed Kyoko to brush her hair and retie her ribbon (what Toto laughing called ‘her only charm point’) into the little braid crown she habitually wore. They giggled together at their reflections in the mirror.

“Oh! You look like you could be my little sister, Michiko-chan!”

“Un, Kyoko-nee!”

“Smile!” Click, whir, and there went another picture. “Do you want to shake it this time, Michiko-chan?”

Michiko cheered, her arms up like a baby bird expecting to be fed. “Yeah!”

Even as Michiko shook the picture, they both giggled. “Then it’s decided! You can keep this picture, and I can keep the next one!”

A knock on the doorframe interrupted their moment. “Oh. There’re my pretty girls. Look at you. Give us a spin.” Uncle Kaoru had somehow managed to scrounge up his classiest outfit, one of those awful ones that made him look less like a reporter or a part-time bartender and more like some famous actor. Toto always called it his ‘pretentious douchebag look’, but Michiko wasn’t allowed to even think those words in Toto’s presence. Kyoko called it his ‘James Dean’ look and told her quite seriously that she would explain it properly when Michiko was older.

Michiko was not supposed to know that Kusakabe the Elder, Tetsuya’s cousin Tetsuo, called Uncle Kaoru when he bothered to dress nice nothing but ‘spank bank fodder’. She had a feeling that mentioning this to Tetsuya would lead to Kyoya brutalizing Tetsuo’s corpse while Tetsuya took her out for ice cream.

The fact that somehow Uncle Kaoru had managed to dress up Ryohei in much the same vein was a minor miracle.

But Michiko and Kyoko obliged him. It was nice to not be overshadowed by the mysterious beauty that was Toto for once. Uncle Kaoru and Ryohei clapped as the girls spun to make their skirts flutter just so. “Very nice. Ah, they grow up so fast. Well, my lovelies, shall we?” Michiko was far too used to Uncle Kaoru’s strangely elaborate mannerisms when he was trying to make them laugh. So when he bent and offered his elbow, Michiko was more than happy to slip her hand in the crook of his wrist and snicker as Ryohei tried the same with his sister.

The drive itself was uneventful. Namimori was a small town, and the particular sushi restaurant that Tomoe (not that they would ever admit it) avoided like it was on fire and they had no social responsibility towards it, was in a particularly normal part of the town. It was highly traditional looking, and Michiko was suddenly very glad that she had dressed nicely for the event. She still tried to hide behind Ryohei’s knees as they entered.

Toto had taken her aside once, after the yearly ‘stranger danger’ class at school, and informed her that if she ever felt threatened by something to ‘sacrifice the blockhead for the greater good’. According to Toto, Ryohei was basically a cockroach. There was nothing under the sun that could kill him. Kyoya had tried. Well, it was more accurate to say that Ryohei had gotten  _ excited _ and tried to join the so-called Festival of Youthful Vigor and ended up smack dab in the middle of both Kyoya and Toto’s ‘ultimate sure-death’ attacks. All Ryohei had gotten out of the experience was a deep knowledge that he needed to never repeat the experience again.

So if there was anything dangerous in this so called ‘TakeSushi’ (or at least if she was reading the kanji right, and from Kyoko’s surreptitious nod she was) was the lack of customers.

And the boy with the baseball bat sitting at the counter like he owned the place.

“Ah! Yamamoto-kun,” Kyoko gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “I didn’t expect to see you here!”

“Ha ha! Hey, Sasagawa-chan! How’s it going?”

Toto would hate this boy on sight. Michiko was thus resolved to be his  _ best friend ever _ . He could be one of her bridesmaids when she married Tetsuya. Toto had a kimono he’d look nice in. The boy in question was  _ tall _ , tan, and far too relaxed for any kind of prolonged contact with the Shimizu family. She almost pitied him.

“Hm? You know this boy, Little Miss Kyoko?” Uncle Kaoru clearly approved of Toto’s approach to entering questionable places, because he too had let Ryohei enter the building first. Kyoko just waltzed in after her brother, secure in her knowledge that everything would be  _ fine _ because Ryohei would take care of it.

Only an idiot assumed Uncle Kaoru would actually do anything useful if this place turned out to be the den of some criminal syndicate. He couldn’t even kill a spider in the bathroom without screaming for Toto to handle it. (It was an unspoken rule in the Shimizu household that all bug extermination was left to Michiko, as Toto couldn’t control their own strength and they had all gotten far too good at patching holes in drywall.)

Kyoko tilted her head and smiled, that spacy smile that always made people assume she was absolutely harmless. “Oh? Yamamoto-kun is in the class next door! He’s always playing baseball with the middle schoolers after school, so that’s why you don’t recognize him.”

Uncle Kaoru gave a sage nod, hummed to himself as he stroked at his stubble. “I see. It’s a pleasure, Yamamoto-kun. Do you… live here?”

A man emerged from a room somewhere in the back, lifted the blue cloth flaps with one absentminded arm and stopped upon seeing the small crowd. “Welcome to TakeSushi!”

“Ah, Dad! We’ve got customers.”

Michiko glanced back at Uncle Kaoru and froze. She shook her head at the careless expression he wore and tried her best not to laugh as Kyoko zeroed in on the uncomfortable mood to snap a photo. Everyone in her family was just… hopeless.

Uncle Kaoru was always that strange man who managed to turn a simple conversation into what Toto called a double entendre and Michiko didn’t understand. He only ever did it with Tetsuo, so Toto had deemed the habit harmless enough to let slide. What he did with his frequent overnight guests was absolutely none of their concern.

He purred when he talked, voice dropped to a pitch that made the little hairs on the back of Ryohei’s neck stand up. “Well hello. I’m Kaoru. Shimizu Kaoru. What’s your pleasure?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I can be found over at lacelich on Tumblr if you wanna ask me weird questions and not have to worry about time delays or privacy concerns. If you saw something offensive or that you don't understand, ask away!
> 
> (Look, Michiko is my favorite ok. I love her. She is the best child. Best. Child.)
> 
> So who wants to start guessing Flame types? Because I guarantee some of these you will not see coming.
> 
> Obligatory shout-out to mah bestie who is the entire reason we have not one OT3, but _two_. You happy? The starter set has begun. _I will sink ships and there's nothing you can do to stop me <3_


	5. Xanatos Gambit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan that succeeds even if you fail.  
> -Or-  
> Why Hibari Kotori is a gloriously magnificent bastard and Tomoe lost when they walked in the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We gonna have some canon typical violence here everyone. If hitting kids and minor homophobia is your nope button, teal deer this entire chapter as 'Tomoe failed, Hibari Kotori owns always'.
> 
> I have a basket of original characters and I have zero shame in this. Zero. Shame.
> 
> Chapter updates are being changed to once weekly if my life allows it, as we're hitting the retail hell season. All Lace wants to do during retail hell season is play her FFXIV and drink herself into an early grave, so writing gets a bit more difficult.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

This was a fact of the universe that could not be avoided. Not even Shimizu Hisamaru was exempt from this rule. In the absence of someone who could fill a role, anyone who suited the qualifications would do. If Hibari Kyoya had an active relationship with Kyoko instead, it would be the younger Sasagawa sitting across the tatami from Hibari Kotori. But it wasn’t.

Instead it was Hisamaru, lying through their pretty little teeth.

Hibari Kotori didn’t look a day over thirty-five. She kept her hair cut in a no-nonsense bob and smoked her kiseru with a reckless grace. Her kimono was a purple so dark it resembled the night sky, and her grey eyes glinted as she waited for something resembling sense to come out of Hismaru’s mouth.

In short: this woman would kill their entire family if they were anything less than honest.

They bowed, fingertips touching the tatami as they let their butterfly sleeves drape artfully across their lap. “I must beg your forgiveness, Hibari-sama, for I have wronged you.”

They couldn’t see her face with their own pressed against the floor. This was the ultimate technique of Japanese and they did it for no one. The clack of metal and a long exhale, accompanied by a sudden increase in the smell of smoke, was all they knew. “Raise your head, Shimizu Tomoe.”

“I must humbly reject your order, Hibari-sama. For that is the first way I have wronged you.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of Kotori’s pipe. “Wao. Very well. How have you wronged me then, child?”

They cringed. This could end with their head on a chopping block, or it would if they were in a society where the Hibari could get away with it. But they were resolved to remain calm at all costs. “My name is Shimizu Hisamaru. There is no such person as Shimizu Tomoe.”

She laughed. The Lady of Namimori, may she live a thousand years, actually laughed. “Did you think I did not know this? That I would be so blind to that which happened in my lands? If that is all, raise your head and let us speak no more of this.”

Hisamaru found themselves speechless for a long moment, but kept their head pressed against the tatami. “That… is not all. I… I’m…”

She clicked her tongue. “Physically male. I am aware.”

“Are you aware that I am-”

“Mentally female.”

“And that I-”

“Do not see yourself as either one. Really, child. An idiot could see that.”

Hisamaru resisted the urge to smash their face through the floor. If the woman knew that, why in the world did she still want to meet her? They hadn’t even had dinner yet and Hisamaru wanted to crawl into the deepest hole in the world and pull the dirt over them. “Then you-”

“Do. Not. Care. Adopt children and give me grandbabies to spoil. Raise your head.” Fingers pressed against the side of Hisamaru’s face, caressing gently until they were forced to raise their head by her grip on their chin. “You are aware of who I am?”

As Hisamaru did not live in the hole they wanted to disappear into, of course they did. “Hibari Kotori, mayor of Namimori and descendant of the Hibari clan.”

She smiled. It was not a reassuring smile. Surgical glass scalpels had more kindness than her smile. “And third daughter of the fourteenth Dragonhead of the Wo Shing Wo. Child, I have seen more mysteries than you have years. Yours is not something to bow your head over. Hold your head high and live your life as you please. No one will shame you in my town and see the sun rise.”

It said something about how the Hibari functioned, or at least as far as one could tell from constant interaction with Kyoya, that Hisamaru was actually reassured by this information and subsequent pledge. The Hibari kept their word, they had for over a thousand years, and a pledge like that was worth more than gold within the boundaries of Namimori. “Thank… thank you. But I am afraid that is… not the only wrong I have made against the Hibari.”

Kotori’s fingers tightened on their chin. “Child, you are not yet thirteen and sharpen your fangs against my son. What could you  _ possibly _ have done to wrong us in so brief a time?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. Sometimes it was best to just rip off the proverbial band-aid and beg forgiveness later. “I’m sorry. I take offense to the neglect you show your son and the charge of your town during the Vongola’s affairs.”

Hisamaru had never been backhanded hard enough to snap their head to one side before, their neck making an ominous cracking sound. When Kyoya hit her, he never aimed for her face after the first time. But Kotori hit in such a way that it wouldn’t bruise so much as redden for a time and fade by the morning. Considerate, even as the woman who had done it waited for them to recollect themselves. She was a glacier, but the cat’s eye glint of purple that had glimmered for just a moment before she calmed herself was enough. “Explain yourself.”

“The well-being of Sawada Tsunayoshi was placed in your hands the moment he became a citizen. I have seen for my own eyes what his life is like.” They hadn’t, because they couldn’t get within fifteen feet of the tragic mess that was Dame Tsuna without wanting to murder every living thing that had done him wrong. “As for your son… I have seen what you will  _ fail _ to do.”

Kotori lit her pipe with practiced flicks of her fingers before she blew the smoke out into the room. “ _ Explain _ .”

“What if I told you I knew the future? Or, to be more accurate, a single  _ possible _ future.” There. The dice had been rolled and the game begun. Now to see what Hibari Kotori made of it.

“Impossible-”

“The only ones who reliably know the future are the leaders of the Giglio Nero. The Sky Arcobaleno.” They’d had to write that name down and memorize the numbers in order to comprehend things once, and that knowledge was going to serve them beautifully in this life.

Hibari Kotori raised a shocked brow and waved negligently at them in the universal sign to continue. So they did.

“Aria. Fon. Colonello. Lal Mirch. Skull. Viper. Verde. Reborn. The World’s Strongest Seven, and the one mistake. In order: Sky, Storm, Rain, Mistake, Cloud, Mist, Lightning, Sun. How would you prefer your proof, Hibari-sama?”

Hisamaru tried very hard not to let any mirth show on their face as Kotori placed her pipe down and focused her attention on them with laser precision. “Where?”

“Almost thirteen years ago, I died. And somehow I got a second chance. Reincarnation, if you’ll suspend disbelief long enough to accept it. I am not the first or the last reincarnated person who will walk the streets of Namimori. I am, however, the only one  _ to my knowledge _ who comes equipped with foreknowledge of this world thanks to my previous life.” There was zero point in bullshitting the one person who might as well be a deity in their life. If they could manage to win her over, so much the better. The Hibari had resources and connections to spare, and Hisamaru was in desperate need of them.

“What else?”

Hisamaru bowed. “Many things. The one of most concern to you would be the Vongola Ring Battles. And the fact that a mafia Famiglia will be using your town as a training ground for their next boss.”

Kotori let out a hiss that Hisamaru recognized from one too many times of smacking Kyoya in the balls. This was annoying the woman. Information dropped at her feet with zero concrete details, for free, and she could do nothing about it. “Who?”

“The boss in question is Sawada Tsunayoshi. The same child you allowed to have part of his… I suppose you could call it his soul and mind, sealed away.” Not that Hisamaru could remember exactly how that was supposed to work. But they did remember getting rather offended that some old man had decided to basically lobotomize a child just to remove him from the possibility of succession for an organization said child had nothing to do with. Allowing such a thing to happen was nothing but negligence.

Judging by the way that Kotori snapped her pipe in her fist, the woman felt the same. “ _ Who dared?” _

“The Ninth Vongola and Sawada Tsunayoshi’s father.”

“ _ I’ll bite them to death.” _

Suddenly, Kyoya’s catchphrase made perfect sense. “The damage will be undone... eventually. But as it stands, there is no one willing or capable of protecting him from the Vongola. And they will come back. All their heirs are dead or imprisoned in ice. He’s the last ditch option.”

“What do you suggest, child?”

Hisamaru bowed again, for there was no shame in appeasing a woman who by all appearances could wrap her spine around a tree and still have time for her salon appointment. “Knowledge is power, Hibari-sama. Allow me to use mine in your name.”

The woman laughed. “Ah, so there is your game. What would you need to serve me?”

If wishes were fishes, they’d be able to ask for the moon and Kotori would give it to them. Instead, they had to be realistic. An impossible world had impossible logic, and the only way to beat them was to join them. “A Dying Will. Magic fire, and the training to remain constantly one step ahead of the pack.”

“My son is not enough?”

“Hibari-sama, we find ourselves under the threat of the apocalypse. Your son is enough to get me to their level, but not to  _ exceed a mass murderer who has the ability to know himself in parallel worlds _ or to survive a  _ baby who makes warp portals. _ If I am to serve you, I will need to be able to  _ survive _ that.”

The crack of Kotori’s hand against Hisamaru’s other cheek was surprisingly not unexpected. “You wish for me to send a  _ child _ to face the end of the world?”

Hisamaru pressed their forehead against the tatami again. “You had no problem sending your  _ son _ and six more of your citizens to fight before. I am  _ willing _ and  _ consenting _ to the course.”

“ _ Raise your head, Shimizu Hisamaru,” _ Kotori growled. “Do not debase yourself-”

“I will debase myself to save the children of Namimori if I have to! Help me to help them, Hibari-sama!” If this failed, they were  _ all _ dead. Hisamaru remembered that very clearly. In the future, nine years and some odd months from the start of the plotline and thus twelve years and some months from  _ now _ , Byakuran annihilated any and all signs of resistance. Hibari Kotori would have been at the top of his list once he turned his gaze to Namimori. Kyoya would lose his mother, just as surely as Yamamoto Takeshi (and good lord they would avoid that restaurant until they died) would lose his father. But there was still worse. “Because I am your son’s sparring partner, they will kill my family. Because you are your son’s mother, they will kill  _ you _ just as surely. Let me at least  _ try _ to do something good!”

“Tell me. Do you seek to do this because you care that much? Or do you simply seek power for power’s sake alone?”

Dimly they registered the cold trickle of snot against the tip of their nose and the warm trail of tears going down their face. “ _ He’ll kill Michiko. _ ” And for that, for Michiko, Hisamaru would have to do something. This was their fault. If they hadn’t been such an idiot and made friends with Sasagawa Ryohei and his sister, hadn’t thrown that damned shoe, they wouldn’t be in this predicament. They could have happily gone the rest of their lives under Byakuran’s thumb and now the apocalypse was even worse. Hindsight was awful like that.

Even worse, if this all failed, Ryohei and Kyoya would die. Because that was what Arcobaleno did. They were cursed and then they died when it was time for the new generation. That much they remembered.

Hisamaru did not want to contemplate a world where Ryohei wasn’t. Nor did they really want to be in a world where Kyoya was brought to his knees by anyone but them.

As someone who could go sort-of toe to toe with Kyoya, they didn’t want to think of what that meant for them. They would rather die first. But if they could take the place of Ryohei or Kyoya, that would be fine too.

Kotori pressed the pads of her fingers to the back of Hisamaru’s neck, forcibly dragged them to their feet in an impressive chokehold for such a tiny woman. “My son?”

It was hard to get the words out when Kotori was choking all of the air out of their body, and Hisamaru gagged even as they tried. “Sac-sacrifice.”

She dropped them to their knees, kept their hands folded neatly around their neck like a morbid flower arrangement class. “You will take his place?”

How much worth did they really place in their own life? This was their second chance. Technically they had already lived a full and satisfying life and this was just an unexpected bonus. “Yes.” If they could. Or if they could find someone else to take his place. Maybe trip him and shatter his watch, force some other Cloud to take up the slack. Hisamaru didn’t really remember the end of that weird comic book series, but they’d be damned if they let even one of their friends (if you could even call Kyoya their friend) die to save the world. Japanese morals could hang themselves.

Kotori squeezed tighter until Hisamaru saw spots. They kept their hands loose at their sides and didn’t fight her. If this was her reaction to a threat to her son, then so be it. She was warned, and that was a fair sight better than she was likely any other universe. “Swear. Follow my lead.”

“Y-yes,” they managed to croak out.

Kotori released them with a heavy sigh. “You’ll sign it. In blood. My lead or none at all.” She crossed the room with quick efficiency as Hisamaru rubbed at their neck and gasped like a fish against the tatami. By the time they had managed to collect themselves and sit properly like the girl they pretended to be, Kotori had placed a single piece of paper in front of them. She handed them a knife that looked suspiciously like a letter opener and nodded at their thumb. In blood.

Hisamaru sliced into the meat of their thumb, just at the crease, a tiny little wound that was enough to allow them to press their thumbprint to the paper. Normally they would read it first. But this had to be enough to sway Hibari Kotori to their side.

“The Shimizu swear to the Hibari.” She snapped the paper out from under their gaze before they could get a proper look at it, and folded it swiftly into her sleeve. “From this moment on, your life belongs to me. You will value my property more.”

The unspoken ‘or else’ hung heavily in the air between them. Hisamaru bowed low once more, stopped from pressing their forehead against the mats by the presence of Kotori’s foot. “Hibari bow to  _ no one. _ Hold your head high, Tomoe.” When she saw Hisamaru’s head rise, she smiled that glass scalpel smile. “Good. We will make a proper Hibari of you yet.”

Hisamaru clenched their hands within the folds of their sleeves, relying on the bulk of the fabric to hide their ire. This was not the optimum outcome. It was, in fact, the absolute worst outcome. Kotori tapped her fingers against her cheeks, long nails coming far too close to their eyes. “Good. There is soul in you yet. You will need it. Tell me what you know of souls and their flames.”

“Dying Will Flames are-”

“No. The  _ soul _ is not a dying will. It merely is or it is not. To have no soul is to have no life behind your eyes. We will teach you to temper your soul, to bank its flames when not needed and to fan it to life with the wave of a paper fan.” Kotori held their face, caressed it and stared down at the newest addition to her flock. “They call you ‘princess’. So we will make one of you.”

Hisamaru resisted the urge to hiss, to put their back up and claw out the woman’s eyes. They were no princess. That was Michiko, darling dearest Michiko. All they were was the thing that stood between the world and their little sister. “I’m not-”

Sharp edges pricked against the corners of their eyes, and Hisamaru shut their mouth. “Defiance is not tolerated.” Her sleeves rustled faintly as she tilted Hisamaru’s head just so. “You will learn. Mondays and Fridays, you will spend with my son. Unless I tell you otherwise, Tuesdays and Thursdays will belong to me. I will inform you when I have located someone to properly temper your soul.” She released Hisamaru’s face and glared down at her new protege. “You are familiar with the Kusakabe.”

Hisamaru nodded dumbly.

“Good. Pick one.”

“...  _ What?” _

“You are a  _ Hibari _ now, you belong to me. I will not have what is mine ill cared for, nor will I have you running around  _ my town _ without proper guidance. Until such time as you have been tempered, you are still a  _ child _ under my care.”

A distant part of Hisamaru’s mind, the part that still retained the soul of an elderly black woman, balked. They were a strong, independent, fluidly gendered person who didn’t need a babysitter. Who was this woman to tell them- wait. This woman owned them. This woman owned every facet of their life and held their fate in her well-manicured hands. If she said ‘pick a babysitter’, then they had damn well better pick a good one. “Tetsuya. I pick Tetsuya.”

Kotori shook her head. “He belongs to Kyoya.”

Damn and double damn. The only other Kusakabe that they knew enough to permit them near their person with as much frequency as Kotori demanded was Tetsuo. And Hisamaru really did not need to spend that much time with their uncle’s most dedicated paramour. “Then one who can keep up.”

For that, Kotori laughed. “Well played. I will permit it. You will carry a phone at all times.” The look in her eyes was enough to convince Hisamaru that they had better find a way to sew multiple phones to their person, keeping spare batteries on them at all times, and one phone in a waterproof plastic case.

“Tomoe.”

They would not bow. If they bowed, Kotori would just backhand them again. That was an experience to be avoided at all costs. “Yes, Hibari-sama?”

The tiniest nod was all they needed for approval. Thank the lord they had figured out how she would be training them  _ before _ their face was black and blue. “As far as Namimori is concerned, your name is Shimizu Tomoe. Do not change that fact. Accommodations will be made. You will not go unarmed, and you will report to the Homeowner’s Association first thing tomorrow morning.” Kotori wrinkled her nose, or as much as a woman that put together would wrinkle anything on her face. “Your weapon of choice is… not permissible. Pick another.”

“My mops last longer than wood sticks.”

“ _ Pick another. _ No Hibari would use something that… disgraceful.” As far as Hisamaru could tell from the glacial woman, the very thought that her son had been fighting a girl who armed herself with sponge mops and whatever charitable wooden sticks he brought her was insulting.

There was no way to phrase this delicately. So Hisamaru bowed, yet again, and resolved to use their most charming manners to express the problem to Hibari Kotori. “It is with great sorrow-”

Kotori was not amused. A change in tactics was necessary before she slapped them again.

So Hisamaru put their fist through the floor.

The ringing in their ears was not unexpected, once they really thought about it. What kind of person runs around putting holes in their host’s floors? Sure, it was an impressive party trick. But so was breaking something else impossible that wouldn’t lead to thousands of yen worth of repairs. Hindsight was a terrible thing.

Really, this was not Hisamaru’s best or brightest day. They wanted to blame it on someone else, but no one was making them do moronic thing after moronic thing. And now there was a small crater in the packed dirt beneath the house, because  _ of course _ they just put a four-inch hole in the  _ antique _ wood of a  _ thousand-year-old _ house. It was a good thing they had already left everything to Michiko in their will, the same will that Kyoya had even grudgingly signed before they had been whisked away to the worst conversation of their life.

“Do you do that frequently?” Kotori had the sense to stare down into the hole after they had pulled their hand out in a rain of shimmering sawdust. Lacquered wood and tatami mats didn’t survive the fraction of effort Hisamaru had put into the punch. Maybe their ridiculous training regimen was paying off after all.

They tried to be nonchalant as they scooted backward, giving ample space as they attempted to get away from the woman. “... Kyoya can verify it. I was the one who put that new pothole in the parking lot. Also the hole in the fence. And the hole in the-”

Kotori raised her hand and Hisamaru’s mouth clicked shut. “Hn. I will inform your instructor of your… difficulties.” It was nice for someone to recognize the fruits of their labor, truly, but Hisamaru could have done without the backhanded slap that it came with. They had a sudden appreciation for Kyoya’s compulsive silence and steeled themselves to affect it at the soonest possible moment.

If they could have managed to stop vomiting words into the silence they would have. But there was something about the precise frown on Hibari Kotori’s face that just compelled them to fill the void. And Hisamaru made terrible choices when they didn’t stop to think things through properly. Thus it was a fair assumption that they almost cried tears of sheer relief when the woman in question waved her hand and allowed Hisamaru to leave the room.

They collapsed in the hallway at Tetsuo’s feet.

“That bad, Tomoe-hime?” He raised one thin brow at her and tried not to laugh.

Hisamaru rubbed at the sides of their nose, thumbs rubbing circles into their temples. “That was… disadvantageous. I don’t think she likes me,” they sighed.

Tetsuo had the grace to at least smother his chortle as a manful cough into his fist. He couldn’t look at them without said cough coming back, so he stared studiously at the rice paper screens behind Hisamaru’s graceless sprawl. “Now what would make you say that? You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“I have lessons with her on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And she’s going to find me a trainer. To top it off, I still have to have dinner with her.” Callused fingers slid down their face and massaged at the sting as best as they could without rubbing off any of their makeup.

Tetsuo handed down a handkerchief and carefully kept his eyes trained on the screen as they blotted the tears from their face. “There’s a bathroom down the hall if you want to powder your nose before Kyoya-sama sees it, Tomoe-hime.” He carefully held his hand down to help them to their feet, and Hisamaru stubbornly ignored it in favor of rocking to their feet.

It shouldn’t have surprised them that there was a spare case of makeup under the sink. But it was touching and it was like someone  _ cared _ and they couldn’t really help their broken sobs any more than they could stop the rain from falling. Hisamaru took a long moment to calm themselves, crouched on the floor with their makeup running and mascara hopelessly wrecked. This was not what they had planned. Instead this was the exact  _ opposite _ of anything their good intentions had intended. All they had wanted was to have adults with some accountability, one ally who had the political clout to at least force some sort of action.

Where were all the adults when the world was ending? Not just once, twelve and some odd years from now, but twice when the black hole baby and the man with the checkered mask wanted to sacrifice children to restore the rainbow? Were they supposed to just leave the fate of the world to a bunch of children and mafia members, assassins included? What kind of burden was that to put on the shoulders of children?

Hibari Kotori took offense to their passing of responsibility, just as much as she took offense to their claiming of it. There was no winning with a Hibari. They should have known that. Hisamaru might have had more luck raising a gang of their own, converting them into a valid vigilante force, and just savagely beating the problems plaguing the world to death.

And then they remembered that there was absolutely nothing stopping them from still doing that.

It was technically even permissible in the charter of the Homeowner’s Association. In fact, it was actively encouraged in a weird roundabout way. In the event that a citizen felt that the security and safety of Namimori was not adequately managed by the Realtor’s Foundation, it was within the purview of the citizen to establish a special task force to manage the problem themselves. The same rule had been used by Hibari Kyoya to establish his Disciplinary Committee as a legitimate security force within the confines of Namimori, based out of Namimori Middle School.

(A distant ancestor of the Hibari matriarch had apparently been a great fan of the Shinsengumi and their ruthless efficiency as the Bakufu’s death squad. Hisamaru was not complaining.)

So they belonged to Hibari Kotori. So what. They could still work with it. They needed seven people, at a minimum, to pull this off. One for each color of the rainbow. And then all they had to do was temper them as much as Hisamaru themselves was to be tempered. A suicide squad full of people who would sacrifice themselves in the name of a bunch of children who didn’t deserve to die so soon.

They steeled their resolve as they slapped a cold washcloth across their eyes to lessen the swelling their crying had caused. Gekkougumi. They would be the founder and captain of the Lunar Rainbow Squad, a special task force dedicated to averting the apocalypse. And if the double crisis was averted with no deaths, then they would disband and go about their lives. If it couldn’t be resolved peacefully, then they would all die.

Not that anyone would ever suspect a bunch of weirdoes in a group named after a moonbow to be anything but a bunch of nerds.

All they needed was a soul in each color.

Which meant that Hisamaru needed to figure out exactly what color their soul was so they could eliminate that from the list. They prayed, even as steady hands reapplied their lipstick, that they were either Cloud or Sun.

This was all very lofty and probably far too complex of a goal for a twelve-year-old. But they were a twelve-year-old who was walking into this with the full knowledge of that which was going to go wrong and a healthy idea of how badly it could, which was a fair sight more prepared than the actual children who were supposed to handle both problems.

For Ryohei to have a chance to grow old and die in his sleep instead of violently by mafia related shenanigans, they would happily pay the price. He would look after Michiko for them. As long as they never actually told Ryohei what they were really up to… which meant they needed to find some cover story for what the Gekkougumi was really for.

Maybe they could lie and say it was for public order, in order to increase the efficiency of response within the broader community. They’d have to bullshit something about how it wasn’t fair to everyone for Hibari Kyoya to be the only one allowed to have their own little gang. It wasn't even really a committee so much as it was a gang of delinquent boys Kyoya had beaten into submission-

They could work with that.

No one said there weren't delinquent  _ girls _ running around Namimori. Kyoya had entirely ignored them. But there was a resource that had gone untapped. Delinquent girls, former criminals, do gooders too terrified of the Hibari to sign the charter. They had their pick of Namimori if they just bothered to apply themselves. If they got properly motivated, there was nothing stopping them from picking up delinquents from Namimori High School. If they got creative, there were dropouts a plenty, just ripe for the offer.

They would take them all.

Somewhere in the lot of problem citizens there had to be a broad spectrum of the rainbow.

Thus resolved, they straightened in front of the bathroom mirror. “You are Shimizu Tomoe, and you take no shit. All things pointless will be  _ destroyed _ and you will take no prisoners.” The face in the mirror was drastically different than the one she had left her home with. Her spell had been reapplied, strengthened by the tiny cat glimmer in her eyes.

Dinner was an exercise in manners and restraint. She locked eyes across the table with Kyoya and glared with all her might. This was his fault. She could have died happily never making the acquaintance of Kyoya's mother.

His eyebrow raised and she raised hers in turn. She was fine. His eyes dropped to the red on her cheeks that was not from her blush, and she scowled when he smirked. Her fingers tapped against the tatami and he raised his bowl to his face to hide behind.

Kyoya was the worst. And he was doing it on purpose, tried to get a rise out of her so she would throw her dinner at him and they could get down to his favorite hobby. How his mother had interpreted their violent relations to mean that she was going to be the stereotypical girl who married her childhood friend was beyond her. Kyoya wasn't denying it, and that just made it worse.

Tomoe was going to put his head through a wall on Monday. All the way through, drywall and support beams be damned.

He smirked even wider and she glared all the harder. Such a jerk. She was not going to fight him with his mother and father  _ right there _ on the opposite sides of the table. Tomoe was sorely tempted to kick him under the traditional table, but with her luck she would end up hitting his mother by accident and then she would die. It was bad enough that she was eating dinner with them; she didn’t need to have it be her last meal as well.

Tomoe tried her absolute best to not speak unless spoken to. She kept her answers short and as with as little incriminating details as she could. The only time she spoke without being asked a direct question was to pass along her compliments to the chef.

Kotori made Kyoya walk her to the car. She refused to speak first.

“Fox.”

If she didn’t know any better, she would say he almost sounded concerned. “Kyoya-san.”

“Do not let my mother gain the upper hand or I’ll be forced to bite you to death.” He sounded so serious, even more so than he always did.

Tomoe rolled her eyes at him. “Pointless.” They stood in front of the car as an awkward silence descended on them. Normally they enjoyed silence as a cornerstone of their relationship, but this one in particular was stilted and heavy with words that needed to be collected.

“Fox.”

Tomoe hummed in his general direction, her kanzashi tinkling in the evening breeze. “Yes, Kyoya-san?”

“... your clothing is acceptable.”

She smiled at his compliment, then let the expression die on her face as she looked at him in shock. Belatedly, Tomoe realized that she had never actually smiled at him before. Scowled, screamed, shrugged, but never a real smile. “Kyoya-san?”

“ _ I’ll bite you to death.” _ As he pulled out his tonfa from the depths of his sleeves, Tomoe yanked the car door open and slid into its relative safety. In the time it took him to lunge across the space, she pulled the door shut with one hand and locked it with a smack of her other. Thus secured in the relative safety of the Hibari family car, Tomoe slumped back against the seat and began to laugh.

She had  _ survived _ and that was enough. Or at least it had to be enough, as she really didn’t have much of a choice. The only way to survive the madness to was to go straight through it. They were not meant for this. But that was the true burden of civic duty. By actively knowing the future, even if it was just one future, it was their moral obligation to do something about it. Tomoe, even when she relaxed and could just be Hisamaru, hadn’t forgotten what it meant to be a responsible and productive member of society.

If they looked at it with an optimistic eye, it could be said that they had somehow managed to find an adult who also comprehended the concepts of civic duty and social responsibility. This was a good thing. It could even arguably be said to be a minor miracle considering what they had to work with.

Theirs was not the laugh of a victor. Instead, it was the laugh of a broken soul. Hisamaru had  _ lost _ by a landslide, gone into a match so woefully underprepared that it was baseless hubris that they could have thought they stood a chance. Just because they could sort of go toe to toe with the son did not mean they stood a snowball’s chance in Hell against the mother. They knew that now. Their fingers shook as they reached up to their hair and began viciously ripping each and every pin and comb from their hair.

Hisamaru threw them to the floorboard and promptly commenced screaming and punching the back of the passenger’s seat. In the quiet darkness of the Hibari family’s town car, that ridiculous behemoth of a vehicle with its excellent acoustics and shock absorbers, Shimizu Hisamaru threw a tantrum. They screamed and cried, wailed and pulled at their hair, drummed their feet against the floorboards, and did everything short of lighting the car on fire.

Tetsuo opened the door once to a banshee wail and closed it again with a wince. He settled against the side of the car and sighed. “I’m not paid enough for this.” Tetsuo locked eyes with Kyoya and he clicked the lock button on the car key fob. “No offense, Kyoya-bocchama.” Kyoya stalked off into the night with a scowl, and Tetsuo sighed again. At least it was a pleasant night to be waiting outside of a rocking car; not too hot or too cold, the sky was even clear enough for him to see stars. Tetsuo amused himself with finding as many constellations as he could and trying to see if he could recall any of the stories behind the names.

The only one he could recall was what was probably the wrong take on Tanabata.

When the car stopped its gentle rocking motions and he could no longer see the dim flash of incredibly pale skin through the tinted windows, Tetsuo clicked the fob lock button rapidly for a long moment. He gave Tomoe time to put herself back together as he slid into the driver’s seat. Tetsuo did his best to overlook her face in the brief moment the car light blinked on, adjusted the rearview mirror as quickly as he could.

Her hair was a mess, her face blotchy and covered in snot. Tomoe’s eyes were red and her manicured nails had punched holes in her palms that trickled blood over the good upholstery. She hadn’t managed to put herself together in the slightest. Tetsuo cleared his throat gruffly as he clicked his seatbelt on. “Are you alright, Tomoe-hime?”

She made a sound that could have been a bastard lovechild of a cackle and a groan. “That’s a pointless question.”

Tetsuo locked eyes with her in the rearview mirror as he smoothly steered the car through the dark streets of Namimori. Her red eyes were dull and lifeless, defeated in less than two hours of entering the Hibari property. “Do you want me to stop somewhere so you can… pull yourself together?”

If looks could kill, Tetsuo would be dead in a ditch with buzzards circling above his corpse. Thankfully, since they could not, Tetsuo settled himself for the always implacable Kusakabe smile. Tomoe had nothing on the glacial fury that was Hibari Kotori. And Tetsuo would know, since he did grow up with the woman. He rather missed their rough and tumble yanki days, of following after the strongest girl boss in recent memory. If Kotori wanted to pick up her suspicious tea friend’s niece as her protege, who was Tetsuo to tell her no?

After all, this was almost entirely his fault to begin with. He glanced at the road and then back into the mirror. Was it really worth all of this madness and violence? Was Shimizu Kaoru really worth all of this?

He weighed the merits of this morning’s rendezvous against the trainwreck that was twelve year old Shimizu Hisamaru and found himself envying people who hadn’t met them yet. Tetsuo drove with white knuckles as he manfully resisted the urge to tell the boy in the backseat that he should have known better. Hisamaru should have kept his head down and never started this elaborate lie in the first place. It was unnatural in the first place, and his constant parading around in skirts and dresses should have been stopped a long time ago.

Tetsuo kept his silence as he drove, guided the car into a stop in front of a park. “Go. Get yourself in order before your uncle can see you.”

Hisamaru hissed as he slid out of the backseat. Tetsuo slouched back against his seat and watched the boy make his undignified walk to the public restroom. Of course he went into the ladies room, because that was how deep his sickness was.

When Kaoru had begged him, forehead pressed to the carpet of his office, to allow his niece to enter school with as minimal effort as possible, Tetsuo had never expected it would continue for this long. Kaoru had said he would do  _ anything _ for his niece. With his pretty face hidden behind that stubble, designer suit pressed (by same niece no less), Tetsuo had just wanted to mess with him. He hadn’t expected it to go this far.

Kusakabe Tetsuo hadn’t expected to  _ like _ it.

His poor cousin Tetsuya had gotten the easier end of the stick. At least he got to keep an eye on Hibari Kotori’s beloved only son. Tetsuya had taken the Shimizu family under his care because Kyoya had a vested interest in continuing his interactions with the so-called Fox. The Demon of Namimori had some weird fascination with Shimizu Tomoe, that much was clear to anyone with a brain.

Tetsuo blamed it on the Shimizu genetics. The whole family was ridiculously pretty, lacking quite a few screws in their brain-pans, and stupidly willing to attach themselves to anyone who met some weird criteria that mattered only to their hindbrains. He was against the Hibari tainting themselves with the entire family line. It was bad enough that Kotori had her infamous tea dates with Kaoru, but that Kyoya had biweekly fights and conversations with someone outside of the family’s influence was unacceptable.

In his own way, Kyoya had even told that deviant that he looked pretty.

And now said deviant had not only Kotori’s permission to  _ continue _ his deviancy, but every Kusakabe was now under strict instructions to refer to them as ‘Tomoe-hime’ unless said boy told them otherwise. It was like the fox had cast a spell over all of the Hibari with a pretty face and a marked tendency for violence.

It was disgraceful, but Tetsuo would tolerate it. Just as much as he tolerated the fact that a Hibari had lowered herself and married a common baker because she  _ liked his smile. _ At some point, Kyoya would get bored of his strange playmate, beat the other boy back into his place, and Tetsuo would quite happily cut ties. If he was even lucky, Tetsuo could continue his relations with Shimizu Kaoru without having to deal with the headache that was either of the other man’s supposed nieces.

Eventually the boy reentered the car in a strange mood. He had put his hair to rights, tied the mass of unbelievable pink up into a high ponytail. That was acceptable. The boy scooped up the scattered pins on the back floorboards and stabbed two of them into the base of the tail as Tetsuo drove off.

He had the grace to open the car door for Tomoe , bowed over her hand and helped her out as she held her head high despite the red rimming her eyes. Tetsuo even walked her to her door proper in order to bid the Shimizu’s a proper good night. It wouldn’t do for Kaoru to think he had been neglected, after all.

“- gorgeous. Little Beauty, one day you will understand these sorts of things. Probably when you’re thirty and Tomoe won’t kill me.”

He could hear Michiko’s laugh at her uncle’s words, and something inside of Tetsuo died. “Uncle Kaoru, you just met him!”

“Ah, but Michiko, dearest to my heart, that’s how love works. One look and it’s over.”

Tetsuo didn’t let go of the doorknob, but he recognized the startling warmth of Tomoe’s hand on his. He met her eyes with his own and narrowly avoided recoiling at the sudden warmth in her eyes. “Good night, Kusakabe-san. I can see myself to bed.”

Tetsuo took the surprisingly gracious retreat the boy gave him. He bowed, just barely respectful, and tried to speak around the sudden lump in his throat. “Good night then, Tomoe-hime.”

He lied to himself that he imagined the vicious grin on her face as he all but fled back to the car.

“Well. That was pointless.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup. That just happened. Hope none of you were fans of Tetsuo, because he's been this shady since the beginning. Bonus points if you can figure out what Kaoru traded, because I'm not about to just come out and say it this early in the game.
> 
> As always, any and all comments will be answered within a reasonable timeframe and I'm summonable on tumblr at lacelich if you prefer anonymity or a speedier response.


	6. Shipbuilding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life moves along.  
> -Or-  
> Why Shimizu Kaoru is the worst role model alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raise your hand if you're surprised this happened.
> 
> All of you? Yes?
> 
> Same here. Honestly, I cut this short because I just can't take it anymore. I see now why the Daily Life Arc was so random and so short compared to everything else. Six versions later, we have a chapter that is shorter than normal by about 2.5k words, but it's here and I can't anymore. Brain just wants to move on to fun things now.

Shimizu Kaoru was not entirely certain where this fabulous hunk of perfection had been all of his life, but he was more than happy to rectify the lack. At this point he would take all the happiness he could from wherever he could find it.

His oldest niece hadn’t been home properly in a week. Whenever Tomoe managed to drag herself through the front door she was always tired and sore, back straight because  _ ladies did not slouch _ until she scraped the kimono from her skin. Her face was an abject lesson in forgetting what it felt like to not be sore to their bones, for her tongue not to feel like sandpaper against her teeth. The last he saw Tomoe, she had a black eye that had just started turning an in interesting shade of puce and a split lip that she would lick when it cracked from the force of her frown.

Shimizu Kaoru could only watch as his niece wore herself into the ground.

The third time she came back from reporting to Hibari Kotori, Kaoru had to bite his tongue when he was called to Tomoe’s room and was met with weights that strapped to her wrists and calves, a harness that tightened and made her struggle for breath and her own stature. He wanted to stop her, wanted it with every fiber of his being. But there was a fire in her eyes, something that shone deep in the depths of her wine red irises. It didn’t make any sense why his long time friend was doing this.

They had gone to college together. They’d been in the same classes there had just been something about her that pulled at something in him. Hibari Kotori was a woman of little words and all the elegance of a silk covered dagger in the dark. She’d been the one to help him with his so called arrangement, of burying the origins of his beloved nieces in veils of so-called Hibari Business.

Kotori had smiled over her pipe, the curve of her wicked smile hidden in the smoke, and told him that everything would be taken care of. That his  _ niece _ had entered into some sort of  _ arrangement _ with the Demon of Namimori and then another with his mother. Kaoru wasn’t to worry at all because this wasn’t his concern.

Shimizu Tomoe had entered into a deal with the devil and her brood, and there was nothing Kaoru could reasonably do to stop it. Every inch of Tomoe now had to be perfect, from the arch of her neck to the lines of her back, because that was what Hibari Kotori desired above all else.

The perfect princess to bring honor to the Hibari name, a deadly poison concealed behind a curtain of silk and flowers. Hibari Kotori desired a Yamato Nadeshiko and would have it by all means necessary.

Kaoru understood that, he did. But he didn’t understand the basics of the explanation. Hibari Kotori was tempering his niece’s soul for some purpose that no one would tell him.

The trick was to think of something important. A vow, person, desire, scrap of information, anything would work as long as it was  _ important _ to the person in question. Once someone had that thought firmly in their mind, all one had to do was  _ want it _ with every bit of their being.

Simple, but surprisingly complex.

Every cell in the body had to align to the purpose, with no deviations or hesitance. A Japanese spirit with Chinese learning, the common-sense mindset warring with the academic knowledge. Or at least that was how Kotori had explained it to Kaoru at the time. Every part of their body had to  _ want _ that thing with crystal clear precision, and then  _ act _ on that desire.

To overcome one’s limitations with a dying will.

That was what Kotori was having his niece learn to do. His niece, his terrifying eldest niece, was being driven slowly to a point where death was the only option she was never allowed to touch. She was supposed to find some magical point where her soul was the only thing she had left to rely on and then just… somehow tap into it.

Kaoru was never going to admit to Hibari Kotori that he had no idea what she was going on about, just as he would never admit to Tomoe that he was perfectly aware that her friendship with Hibari Kyoya was based on a mutual love of destroying everything around them in fits of freakish strength.

He sighed into his glass and let his eyes drink in the refreshing sight of one Yamamoto Tsuyoshi, sole proprietor and owner of TakeSushi. What Kaoru would give to be the knife in that man’s hand and just… exist. No worries, no strange things in his house, no having to clean blood off the bathroom tiles before his youngest niece could see. He could just be held, appreciated, and used until he had nothing left to give.

It would be a delight.

The man in question flicked his knife once, twice, cleanly separated the fat from the useful flesh of the fish. It was always a treat to watch Yamamoto Tsuyoshi at his work. There was something of a real man’s romance, the very thrill of the absolutely untouchable and impossibly unattainable, about the idea of belonging to the capable older sushi chef.

Kaoru hadn’t been able to keep himself from coming back to the sushi bar. It was his oasis, his calm within the tumultuous storm of his life. No matter how much he desired an alternate outcome, Kaoru would be content to watch from afar. He was allowed to have a vacation from reality if he so desired.

And where was the harm in finding that relaxing?

Nowhere.

Or at least that was what he told himself as he took another sip of sake he could barely afford. A journalist’s salary was not designed to facilitate daily trips to a sushi bar and the actual purchasing of sake and sushi on a daily basis.

The Shimizu family had it down to a science.

Ryohei had taken to running with Tomoe  in the morning. Or at least he ran, and she free ran circles around him while her Uncle Kaoru’s blood pressure rose, lapped each other and wove their routes together in a tangle of mutual exhaustion. Sometimes she fell from the wall she tried to moonwalk on her hands, and Ryohei always caught her with a laugh.

Kaoru made breakfast, burned the eggs and then resorted to microwave meals and toast as Michiko looked on. Then he got her dressed for the morning, teeth brushed and hair all perfect, while they both ignored whatever new bandage haphazardly slapped to Tomoe’s body as she flopped across the table.

As soon as the three were done, Tomoe would dash upstairs in a swirl of pink hair and frustration to put on her kimono and stomp off across Namimori to her ‘lessons’. Kaoru would wave Michiko off to school with Kyoko and Ryohei, and then he would head off to work with a lunch break at TakeSushi.

This was their normal now.

Kaoru took another sip of sake and watched the practised motions of Tsuyoshi’s knife. It was soothing in its own way, and he felt some strange something stirring in the pit of his stomach. A desperate want followed by a cold dash of fear and loathing, and he drowned it out with a swallow of sake.

“Are you alright over there?” Yamamoto Tsuyoshi’s voice was just that right combination of raspy and deep that Kaoru’s libido would graciously accept grumbling in his ear. Thunk, thunk, thunk went the knife as he diced away. Thump, thump, thump went Kaoru’s heart.

Some dark part of Kaoru wondered what it would be like to be looked at like a particularly excellent fish on Tsuyoshi’s chopping block. Finding this place had been a miracle from the gods, one that Kaoru was immeasurably glad he had encountered before his life had become nothing but living for his nieces.

Tsuyoshi cleared his throat, knife placed to the side in a quick and respectful motion. Oh, to be held in as high of regard as the other man’s blades. “Oy, Shimizu.”

“I thought I told you to call me Kaoru,” he tossed back what was left of his sake in a reckless gulp. “I’m fine. It’s just… raising girls is much harder than it looks.” Kaoru wasn’t even lying.

Tsuyoshi laughed and wiped his hands on his apron. “I can understand that. At least they aren’t boys. Boys will eat you out of house and home.”

Some god somewhere was looking down on Kaoru with a smile. He was having an actual conversation with the object of his every raunchy daydream, and quite a few of his more pleasant dreams. Kaoru smiled, layering on the charm that swayed many of his nieces’ classmates’ lonely mothers to his side. “At least we’ll have something to look forward to in our old age.”

Tsuyoshi folded his arms over his chest and Kaoru couldn’t help but take a mental picture for later. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced yet. Yamamoto Tsuyoshi. My son Takeshi is in the grade below your Tomoe-hime.”

Kaoru sighed and tried to resist the urge to bury his head in his hands. “Ah. Her reputation proceeds her then. Please tell me she hasn’t…” Oh please may Tomoe have not done the unthinkable and punched this man’s only son.

The other man laughed, a hearty sort of sound that made Kaoru blush behind the hands he couldn’t keep from covering his face with. “Started a fight with Takeshi? No. Never.” Hard to imagine when his niece was the picture of a hellion. Oh, not since Kotori had gotten her hands on Tomoe and decided to mold her into something  _ lethal _ and  _ beautiful. _ When she fought Kyoya now, she did so with flicks of butterfly kimono sleeves that she sometimes got tangled in and had to start all over. And Kotori? Kotori watched each clash with a smile hidden behind her pipe smoke, and she planned while the two hellions ripped up the school yard.

“No… but I’m pretty sure he’s more than half in love with her.”

Kaoru spluttered and choked on what saliva had been in his mouth before that matter of fact proclamation. “Your son. Has a  _ crush. _ On  _ Tomoe. _ ” This was the scandal of the year- no. This was the scandal of the  _ decade. _

Tsuyoshi gave him a wry grin. “Didn’t you know? There’s apparently a Holy Trinity at Namimori Elementary.”

“No. Nope. Nooooot happening.”

“Oh, but it is. Apparently, if Takeshi and his friends are correct, you’re raising the most sought after girls in the entirety of Namimori Elementary.”

Kaoru’s head snapped up fast enough to give himself whiplash. “What do you mean  _ girls? _ Are these little brats trying to go after Kyoko too?  _ If they go after Michiko, I’m calling the Hibari. _ ”

He deliberately chose to forget that he was the spineless coward who had needed to run to the bathroom sixteen times and splash cold water on his face before he could summon up a sentence that wasn't a disaster of a bad pick-up line. Shimizu Kaoru had  _ people _ he could call to handle this sort of thing. He would shamelessly abuse the privilege of his niece selling herself to the Hibari in the name of solidifying their status as jizamurai of Namimori.

Not that anyone would call them that. On paper, the Shimizu were one step below the Hibari, with the fancy title of “assumed fiance of the sole Hibari heir” under one of their belts. In reality, the Shimizu were in a questionable fluid state of popularity based almost solely on their collective attractiveness and sordid reputations. Kaoru had stopped his mother from ordering a copy of the very newspaper he worked for in fear of seeing her family’s latest exploits all over the celebrity gossip pages.

Not that it stopped the Shimizu matriarch from calling him every month, but at least it cut down on the sheer amount of yelling he endured every first Tuesday. Then again, if wishes were fishes then he might as well stock an aquarium. He had one niece who liked to wiggle her latest baby tooth when she thought too hard about something and another niece who only seemed to have friends who enabled her violent tendencies. Michiko was sweeter than spun sugar… but her sister was a whole other story.

Kaoru was well aware that his eldest niece was some weird variety of a siscon. He couldn’t really blame her, nor could he stop her.

He missed the days when all he had to worry about was when tiny little Michiko said that her greatest ambition was to marry the only other friend of Tomoe’s rumored fiance. Instead he had only the reports of his own violent best friend to keep him awake at night. And what he has been told is enough to drive a lesser man to find absolution in the bottom of a bottle.

There is a little old woman, wrinkled and tanned from the sun, who insists on being called Sifu. Tomoe is not one to argue, not after the first time the tiny woman holds up her hand and lights the tips of her fingers aflame. The woman’s name is Yun Ling, and the flames of her soul glittered blue and calm as she moved through each delicate motion. But all Tomoe cared about was that Sifu has promised to show them the ways and mysteries of the Yin Dragon of the North-east.

Sifu did not care that Tomoe was born as Hisamaru.

Kaoru cared that no one, absolutely no one, was willing to tell him exactly what being so burdened with yin energy had to do with the fact that every day he saw his eldest niece she drifted further away from a normal childhood.

What Sifu did care about, and enunciated with each clap of her hands, was that Tomoe had been blessed with an overabundance of yin energies in their soul that have drowned out the yang of their body.

When Tomoe was not being thrown about the courtyard by the likes of either Hibari Kotori or Kyoya, Sifu made them sit in front of a bowl of water so clear they can see their face. The task was supposedly simple: reflect their soul upon the water’s surface. Or, at least, the task was simple to Sifu.

But try as Tomoe might, they could not find that place deep in their core of collected rage that Sifu needed them to reach. Nor could they find a spark of curiosity, a blaze of dedication, or a haze of creativity. All they had was inner peace, and that was useless to the path Sifu had set them on. So sometimes Tomoe sat there with a placid smile on their face that they did not feel, and lied through their teeth on their progress.

And always, try as they might, the glimmer in their eyes that shone like a cat’s eyes in the dark came through like a calm winter morning by a lake. No matter what they did, Tomoe could not find anything in their soul but blue. They could grip the sides of the bowl and pray, bend their fingers under their legs until they screamed, think of the worst possible scenarios, everything under the sun. But they could not meet Sifu’s expectations.

Kaoru sighed and buried his face into his arms, propped up by the wooden counter that was apparently his usual spot now. This was not what he had signed up for when he opened his home to his only sibling’s children.

The man on the other side of the counter reached a hand over the divide to clap his hand over Kaoru’s shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, I’m fairly certain that my son isn’t harboring a crush on the other two.”

What came out of Kaoru’s mouth could only charitably be called a laugh. It was somewhere between the sob of a broken man and a laugh that could have served as a harbinger to a man about to lose his grip on sanity. So this was what it took to get the attention of the perpetually calm patriarch of the Yamamoto family. “Oh. Well that’s… something at least.”

The hand on his shoulder was warm and welcoming as it squeezed in a sort of commiseration that only parents of preteen adolescents and teenagers could manage. Tsuyoshi patted him once more and only the clink of a bottle against Kaoru’s sake cup gave a hint to the other man’s quiet movements. Kaoru looked up and watched as the man carefully went back to his ritualized preparation of a plate of sushi that Kaoru was damn sure he couldn’t afford but ended up placed in front of him anyway. “We single dads have to stick together you know.”

“We could trade. Tomoe for Takeshi.”

“Not on your life.” A swift rejection, one better suited to the straight man in a comedy routine. “At least she’s… sort of well behaved.”

Kaoru snorted. “Hibari Kotori, may she live a thousand years, has decided my beloved Tomoe is her new pet project.”

The knife stopped its rhythmic chopping as Tsuyoshi reached over to refill Kaoru’s cup again. Gods bless the man for his calm in the face of what Kaoru could only consider a proclamation of the end times. “And how is that going?”

“Apparently my niece is in possession of a surfeit of yin that make her a perfect match for some dragon school of martial arts from China.” Kaoru gulped down his sake in one swift motion. “She has a preliminary tutor and Kotori keeps needling me about having a home tutor teach her the ‘finer art of soul tempering’. Whatever that means.”

Tsuyoshi’s knife never stopped. “Hmm. Did our esteemed and duly elected mayor mention anything else?”

“Only that I’m not supposed to reject the tutor outright based on appearances alone and that he apparently comes equipped with only a little bit of baggage. Baggage that I am apparently uniquely suited for. Whatever that means.”

A swipe of his hand later, and Tsuyoshi flicked the spine of the fish to the side. “Property damage?”

Kaoru laughed, only half surprised at the reasonable conclusion. “Not even. Extra houseguests. For an undetermined period of time. Faster Tomoe figures this out, faster they leave.”

Tsuyoshi nodded sagely. “Reasonable. She still keeps to fighting just Hibari Kyoya after all. Though if you could ask her to kindly keep from using my roof as a springboard, I would appreciate it. Takeshi might start getting ideas.”

“You mean beyond trying to get her to bat his balls? Because let me tell you, there’s so much wrong with that goal I don’t even have words. I can’t tell if your son is hitting on my niece or if he genuinely wants to play baseball with her.”

“Both.” Tsuyoshi smiled at Kaoru, and he could feel his insides melt. “Go with both. She’s going to grow up beautiful, and I do not envy you for her first boyfriend.”

He couldn’t help it. Kaoru threw his head back and laughed until he felt like crying, gasping out words whenever he managed to have air to spare. “First? They’d have to go through Kyoya or Ryohei first.”

“Ah, the Sasagawa boy. Their parents still…?”

Kaoru waved a hand nonchalantly. “Off somewhere. They send postcards every once in awhile. Speaking of which, have you heard about the latest? They’re supposed to be going to nationals. Kyoko is thrilled. Ryohei nearly broke my door down trying to tell me about it.”

Tsuyoshi grinned. “They’re good at it.”

Kaoru gave a drunken mock glare. “Apparently you could be too. And yet you’re here.”

“Ah, well I made a promise. I couldn’t just leave Takeshi by himself. Kendo just… wasn’t as important.”

“Here, here. Cheers to our kids and the memory of their mothers.” Kaoru raised his water glass, half empty as it was, before he knocked it back in a parody of a toast. “Speaking of, I should probably head back and and get started on dinner.”

Tsuyoshi’s hands made quick work of the arrangement of sushi to his standards before he deliberately set the pile of boxes in front of Kaoru. “You should probably learn how to actually cook, Shimizu.”

“... But you’re so much better at it. Please tell me there’s double the inarizushi in there; Tomoe is getting grumpy about her losing streak.” Kaoru gratefully bowed over the bento boxes before he carefully wrapped them in the now familiar carrying cloth with well-practiced motions.

Tsuyoshi grinned. “Of course. And a little extra tuna for the girls. You should bring them by again. At some point they’re going to figure out you can’t actually cook and I’ve been doing it for you since you first set foot in here, and then where will you be?”

He snorted, hand ruffling at his hair even as Kaoru slowly stood up from his stool. “I’m the drunk useless uncle, remember? They already know.”

Tsuyoshi guffawed. “You already know the routine then. Come by Saturday and bring all of  your horde. We’ll see if we can’t get at least one of them to figure out how to grill a fish.”

Kaoru would be the last person on Earth to tell Tsuyoshi that his nieces  _ already knew _ how to cook, or that Tomoe and Michiko already had dinner waiting for him at home. Would he do anything to jeopardize either his ready supply of excellent sushi or his personal sanctuary? Not in a million years. If he just kept up the charade that no one at his home could cook, including any of the four terrifyingly self-sufficient children he housed, then he could keep getting weekly invitations to Tsuyoshi’s home.

And one day he would even have the courage to take the other man up on his offer.

Then again, if he got drunk enough and any of his so-called horde needled him enough, the odds that Kaoru ruined the nice thing he had going for himself via horrendously bad timing and obligatory nudity were astronomically high. Maybe if he bribed Ryohei with a new set of boxing gloves, the boy would somehow manage to ‘accidentally’ do something to the microwave to make it unuseable. Or he could, as Kotori liked to call it when she was particularly unimpressed by Kaoru’s awful flirtation and communication skills and had been buried by bureaucracy just a little bit too much that day, ‘balls the fuck up’ and actually ask the other man on a date.

It was strange how Kotori had embraced the potential of her friend dating another man so very quickly. Then again, Kaoru had been waxing a bit pathetically over the various wonderful features of the sushi chef. She may have gotten tired of hearing about it.

Kaoru couldn’t help grinning at the other man. “Maybe one day. But not today. Say hello to Takeshi for me? And as usual, thanks for the treat.” He gave a cocky parody of a salute before he bowed his way out of the door, proud of the fact that he only stumbled a tiny bit on the curb outside the sushi bar.

And there in the shadows two doors down where no one could see the full force of her scowl, was his eldest niece. Her arms were folded carefully into the dry space afforded by the ridiculous kitten patterned umbrella, toes curled into her clunky brown sandals. Kaoru would never understand how his niece could go from the glamour of kimonos from the Hibari to ugly sweaters that made his eyes bleed and awful yoga pants. But she could and did with distressing frequency. The difference was mind-boggling enough that there were quite a few people who believed that so-called ‘comfy mode’ Tomoe was an entirely different person altogether.

The preteen clicked their tongue at him as their blood red eyes bored into him in an attempt to kill him with their glare. “Pointless. You’re a disgrace.”

Kaoru gave his niece a salacious grin. “Ah, but which of us is closest to actually getting a boyfriend, hmm? Here, carry this.” He passed the carefully wrapped stack of bento boxes over as quickly as he could in order to keep them dry, then fluffed the water in his hair towards his niece.

Tomoe snorted and carefully stepped out of the way of the spray. “As if you could manage an actual relationship without help.” But still they took the boxes gingerly, neon green sleeves folded down over their fingers to add a little bit of extra padding to the knot.

Kaoru hated that sweater and still had no idea how his nieces had even managed to find that abomination of neon green and bright purple stripes, or why someone had seen fit to place a bright yellow and orange shaped blob that was supposed be a unicorn on the front. Or at least he was fairly certain it was supposed to be a unicorn. Gods, he hoped that was a unicorn. Kaoru had offered to replace the sweater every time he had seen it reappear from the depths of Tomoe’s closet. “Tomoe? You know we have money. I can get you a better sweater.”

One hand tightened its grip on the umbrella enough for Kaoru to hear it creak. “I like this sweater. It’s comfortable. Which is more than I can say for your… whatever that is.”

“This, dearest niece, is called an ‘ascot’. Sometimes called a ‘cravat’. Which you would know if you paid even the slightest bit of attention to fashion that didn’t come out of a samurai drama. Fashion is not supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to  _ look _ like you care about yourself.”

Tomoe shrugged as best as they could with their burdens. “Pointless. I should just leave you to trip in a gutter somewhere.”

Kaoru gave his niece as much of a winning smile as he could. “But then you would have to come fetch me from the hospital. And you know Mrs. Yamaguchi would just  _ love _ to talk to you about that gash on your eyebrow. Or that absolutely _ lovely  _ shiner you’ve got going from Monday.”

The monster in human skin that, somehow, had managed to spring forth from the loins of the most beautiful woman in the world glowered at him from under the edge of the drenched umbrella. She pursed her lips as she frowned, tongue clicking against her teeth. “Tsch. I don’t see what anyone could possibly see in you.”

“I’m a  _ gift _ to humanity, thank you. So, how’s it uh… going with the uh… punching things in the teeth thing?” Smooth, absolutely smooth. Kaoru proceeded straight to the verbal vomit portion of his inebriation, leaning inadvertently on his niece until she sighed and managed to sling his arm over her shoulder in some weird maneuver he may not have been entirely cognizant for. A distant alcohol-soaked portion of his brain would probably recall the specifics later once it had dried out sufficiently, but for the moment Kaoru settled for not vomiting all over his niece’s shoes and being subsequently dropped into the gutter for it.

There was a long and pregnant pause as Tomoe clearly tried to find the words to describe her efforts. When she did manage to speak, it was in clipped and sparse burst of words. “Fine. It’s going fine. Michiko wants to know if you’ve got the money for her class trip prepared. Also, Hibari-sama wants to know if you’re still coming to tea tomorrow.”

Kaoru did not manage to keep his lunch, ill-gotten and delicious as it was, from spraying across the asphalt and polished leather of his niece’s heeled boots.

Tomoe sighed. “I’ll… take that as a no then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, I can be found over at lacelich on Tumblr.
> 
> Dear readers who are shipping this ship for reasons that are beyond the author's comprehension:  
> This writes itself. I don't even know. It hurts my teeth to write this for extended periods of time.
> 
> [Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt8TKIwj5EM2YAv5ZxAGWMz2jcaTqVHVg)
> 
> [Tumblr Tag](http://lacelich.tumblr.com/tagged/the-fox%27s-wedding)


End file.
